The Childe of Seras: Rewritten
by MindAsylum
Summary: Chapter 21: The White King's Dream
1. Penance

A/N: Well, hello everyone! I wasn't bluffing when I said I planned to rewrite this little story of mine. Think of this as the Child of Seras 2.0. Better in every way I could make it (I hope), and now that I took the time and gave a little more thought, with more potential than ever before. I hope you all will bear with my impulsiveness in this decision, and enjoy the new work and as always, read and review

* * *

The Child of Seras

**Chapter 1: Penance**

Jake clutched his guitar like a teddy bear. From backstage, he could hear the crowd just forty feet from him roared like a hungry beast. It was nothing he hadn't heard before, nor was this a show of any particularly great significance. In fact, it was a venue so obscure it might as well have been underground. Jake hadn't lived in London for very long, but still, he was not surprised that places like this existed overseas as well. Frank, the front man for Post Mortem, had only taken this show because he hoped to gain publicity, and obtain the unusually large check offered in their ad in the paper. It was strange that such little-known club would pay just any band for that amount. Jake thought he should feel lucky that Frank got on the horn as quickly as he did, or someone else was sure to grab hold of it.

But none of this made Jake feel any more at ease. In fact, it just made him more nervous. Something just didn't feel right. Why just one band? Sure, Post Mortem had begun to make a name for itself in the underground scene, but still, every other club they had performed at had never given them the show all to themselves. It was protection; if a crappy band showed up, a venue could always cycle through to the next one. Jake had an edgy feeling that it wasn't the owner's confidence in them that made them set it up like this.

"We're on in five, Jake—'ay, you alright?"

Jake looked up to see a rugged, piercing-laden face. "Yeah, I'm ok. I've just got this weird feeling."

Frank raised a curious brow. "Good or bad?"

"I don't know," he said, looking away thoughtfully, "I'm just sure that after tonight, something's going to change."

Frank smiled in that sly way of his. "Our big break, you thinkin'? We _do_ have the show to ourselves, after all."

"Maybe..." he said, uncertain.

"Well let's just play and see what happens then. This could be just the chance we've been waiting for. We're gonna need all the demons you can conjure, eh?" Frank winked.

That got a well-needed chuckle out of him. It was an old joke between them.

"We're on, kids," called a sarcastically smiling Belle, the drummer.

Jake decided it was best not to worry about it for the time being. Doing a show wasn't hard for him by now, so why make it?

_Just play and see what happens, _he thought.

* * *

Seras scratched the back of her head for tenth time that night. She had no idea what she was so uneasy about. Was it the full moon? Something in the air? No, it was none of those things. She just couldn't escape this odd feeling that something was going to happen this night, something big. Her instincts were rarely wrong, least of all in regards to missions, like the one she was on now. But it wasn't the "I might die today" feeling, or the "Alucard's going to accost me" feeling. She just couldn't place it.

Seras walked the streets in her civilian clothes, paying extra attention to her nonhuman senses. The mission wasn't even that hard: there had been reported vampire activity in a sector of east London, and she was to patrol the area in hopes of picking up on something. A mobile stake-out, essentially. Hellsing soldiers were ready and waiting in nondescript vans on every block. All Seras had to do was give the order, and they would come pouring into whatever structure the fiends roosted in.

And as for Alucard, he was on the other side of the country, handling a ghoul infestation. It felt strange not having him around, but she didn't exactly mind it. It was actually a little nice to work alone for once, even if the mission severity—at least for the moment—was much lower.

It hit her like a riptide. Vampires. At least three of them. "Squads A and B, move in, three to four targets to the west, roughly 100 meters from my current position."

Both gave their confirmation, and Seras dashed over to where the creatures brooded.

* * *

Their first two songs, _The Seasons of Hell _and _Canniballet_, were finished. The crowd was practically eating out of their hand. For the first time since he got to this place, Jake was beginning to think Frank was right. If they kept this up, everyone here would surely spread the word, making it much easier to get into shows. Hell, if they were lucky enough, there might actually be a journalist in the audience.

Just as Frank was pumping up the crowd for the next song, the lights went out. Surprised gasps and groans erupted. Frank, and the rest of the band, cursed loudly.

But Jake didn't. Because that feeling he had before had come back a hundred fold.

A strobe-light stabbed into his eyes like a tattoo artist's needle. Panicked screams filled the air. The crowd parted suddenly, isolating two people in an open circle. At first, Jake thought they were making out.

Until the man dropped the woman's bloodied corpse onto the floor and roared.

Another joyful scream behind him. Jake whipped around to see Belle's throat being chewed through by what looked like a frenzied dope-fiend. Frank shouted in fury, took the microphone stand, and charged, but the creature just laughed, knocked the stand out of his grasp, and ripped his arm off as if it were pulling a weed.

Jake could do no more than sit there, wide mouthed and bug-eyed at the scene unfolding before him. The monster finished drinking the contents of his best friend's arm and looked to him with a bloody grin and narrow eyes.

"Got good news for you." it rasped confidently. "I'm your new band manager. In fact, your friends have already signed the contract." It gestured over to his butchered band, who, to Jake's consummate horror, were standing back up.

They all looked at Jake with blank, sunken-in eyes. Their pupils grayed, their mouths slack and drooling as they hissed and groaned at him.

"Ya see? If you're still not sure about it, I'll let _them_ warm you up to the idea."

They meandered toward him with a shuffling gait. Their mouths opened and closed, rehearsing the movies that would strip the flesh from his bones. Their arms reached out to him, yearning to taste him, to share the curse they had been given. He backed away, blinking his eyes in disbelief.

"Stevie...Hans...Belle...Frank..."

He lost his footing on the edge of the stage. He heard an explosion just as his skull met the floor, and the world went black.

* * *

Seras and a number of troops made their way through the hole in the wall the Harkonen was happy to provide. Inside was just the disaster Seras had expected: the vampires had locked the doors, trapping in all of the people and turning them into ghouls. There were probably no survivors. She began loading the next incendiary shell as she shouted above the chaotic noise:

"Impure souls of the living dead shall be banished into eternal damnation. Amen!"

She fired the round at the first vampire, in the midst of a dozen ghouls. Burning body parts flew in all directions. The second leapt at the wall, and then toward her. At a range of a mere two meters, she drew her sidearm pistol and pushed its brains out the back its skull. Machine pistols rattled and cut down the advancing horde as Hellsing's finest put the London tax pounds to work, but still they pushed on.

"Where the hell's our support?" cursed Mick, the second in-command.

He was answered by the opposite wall being blown apart. Squad B moved in and let fly a spray of delicately-angled crossfire. The ghouls were in a blender now, with no chance that any would escape to make more. Now to find the other two vampires...

The first one realized there was no hope of victory, and attempted to flee backstage. Mick caught it with a well-placed spray of his bull-pup rifle.

"Nice one." Said Seras quickly.

"Can't let you do _all_ the work, right?" quipped Mick, loading in a fresh magazine.

Three vampires gone, that just left...

"Fire another shot and I'll kill him!"

...the last one.

He had narrow eyes and a smooth face, contorted with frantic rage. He held under his arm an unconscious boy, about sixteen years old as Seras judged it. She leveled the pistol at him, and he backed away suddenly, tightening his grip on the boy's neck.

"I swear, you follow me and I pluck his head off like fucking dandelion!"

Hostage in tow, he leapt through the black, painted-over windows above the main entrance, raining glass upon the soldier and ghoul alike. Seras dropped the Harkonen and followed him. She landed on the street and chased the vampire down the block, weaving through any passersby with inhuman speed. This was bad, not only did he have a hostage, but he was in the view of the public, she had to chase him somewhere less exposed before she could dispatch him. If he knew this, then that made him a very clever vampire. If he didn't, then it only showed how desperate he was.

The vampire turned into an alleyway and Seras followed. They came into what looked like a gated vacant lot. Her pursuant leapt over the gate, exposing his face while the boy was out of the way. With no one in sight, she took the shot—

--and regretted it from the moment the bullet left the chamber.

It connected with the vampire's head, reducing him to ash in an instant, and while Seras was careful not to hit the boy in doing so, there was on thing that, in her haste, she hadn't accounted for.

The fence.

The boy fell upon it, three of its long, sharp tips stabbing through his gut. The boy gasped in agony, eyes ripping open.

"My God," she uttered, "what have I done?"

She ran to the boy, who's face hovered a few inches above her own. He looked at her; confused, desperate, and afraid. The moon shone in his green eyes and glistened off of his short, whitish blonde hair.

"I need a medic on the Lanchester street vacant lot, right now! I have a wounded civilian, he doesn't have much time, hurry!"

Her hands gripped the fence tightly as she looked at him. He gagged and coughed up blood, as he tried to say something.

"Don't talk, ok? A medic is coming, just hang on!"

Seras felt a familiar, warm liquid spill onto her hands. His blood was running down the rails, soaking her once-white gloves, leaking through to her skin. The boy breathed in ragged rasps, hunched over the fence, tears flowing down his cheeks in unsung pain.

It was no use. He'd be dead in less than a minute at his rate, if not from blood loss, then from the poisons of his ruptured organs. His eyes were beginning to dull, his face paled.

_He's going to die,_ thought Seras in a panic,_ he's going to die, and it's all my fault._

The boy was lethargically trying to pull himself off, but the blood made the rails too slick. Seras caught his shoulders from slipping any further, stepping onto the cross bar to get at eye level with him.

She leaned in and whispered in his ear. "Listen to me, there is...a way...to survive this," she pulled back the collar of his shirt and swallowed hard, "but you're going to have to come with me. It won't be like it was before, but you'll survive, do you understand?"

The boy tried to give a weak response. That was all Seras needed.

"I'll take care of you, I promise."

She leaned closer, practically feeling him close his eyes, and slid in her fangs gently into his neck. His blood was warm, fresh, delicious, but she would not allow herself to enjoy this, for this was not pleasure.

It was penance.

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A/N well guys, what do you think: better, or worse. I can't know if you don't review, now, so keep em coming! 


	2. Growing Pains

A/N: Ok, this chapter's a little shorter than the first, but I plan to continue it in stride later. I was going to fuse it in with another part, but I didn't want halloween to pass without giving you guys _something_. I hope this was worth it. Happy Halloween, everyone!

**II**

Jake found himself sprawled onto a rocky floor, an expanse of black silence surrounding him. He was almost on his feet when he saw something move in the corner of his eye.

He turned, and there stood, in his usual smart-ass glory, Frank.

"You always were a lucky one, Jake," he said warmly.

"Frank...you're—" he stopped. Frank's face shrank back, pulling onto his skull, narrowing his eyes. His canines extended, and the next thing Jake knew he was staring down at him from some impossible height, its blaring red eyes glowering down at him.

"Maybe a little _too_ much." Said the vampire in a slithering, yet hauntingly familiar voice. "It's a shame you don't share some of that luck with the people around you."

Jake was surrounded by all of his friends, all mauled, maimed, and staring straight at him, cutting him down with their a accusing faces. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

"It's ok, Jake. _I_ forgive you." Said a sweet voice.

He turned to see that he was being comforted by a girl with no head, and yet, impossibly, she spoke.

"Don't worry so much Jake. You'll be joining us soon, too."

Pain erupted in his gut. He fell to his knees and wanted desperately to vomit, but what would normally be spewing from his mouth was leaking through the holes in his stomach: a stew of blood, bile, and half-digested burgers drizzling onto the floor.

"See ya 'round, kid." said the vampire, staring down at him from a cylinder of light. He slammed the lid shut from were he was perched, locking him in the dark.

Jake shot up in his bed, panting. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead as he frantically pulled over his shirt. No wounds. His breathing calmed. He leaned back into the headboard and gave long sigh of relief.

_Wait a minute,_ he thought, _This__ isn't my room..._

He was in what looked like a bedroom, but with no windows, and the walls were a dark, grey stone. It was fairly barren, aside from a simple wooden table in the center, with two chairs on either side, and was lit by an electric chandelier hanging on the ceiling above it. It was spacious, and yet felt strangely confined, probably because of the steel door fifteen feet from the foot of the bed.

It was nice room...sort of, but how the hell could he have gotten here? Obviously, what happened at that freaky club was a dream. Otherwise, he'd be in a hospital on life support, not in some strange dungeon that looked like it had been visited by the Fab Five.

Maybe he was still dreaming.

He pulled the covers off of himself, and saw that he was dressed in white pajamas. And he never wore pajamas to bed. He didn't even own pajamas.

Jake stood up and stumbled to the floor. His legs felt like wet noodles, his arms barely kept him upright. He blinked hard a few times, trying to squint the sudden blurriness away. His throat burned dryly as if he'd been in a desert for days.

_What the hell is wrong with me?_

Whispers seeped from the steel, vault-like door. Someone was here? Maybe he could finally get an explanation. It seemed to take hours before he finally pressed his ear to the door and heard what was being said.

"Anyways, I doubt she'll just let this slide. I'm surprised he even made it all the way to the bloody mansion, much less got his own room." Said a gruff man's voice.

"Well," began the other, clearly younger one. "We've got two already, why not one more?"

"You just don't get it, do you?" accosted the first. "If this keeps up, the next thing you know, we'll be obsolete."

"Come on, Murphy, I doubt Sir Hellsing would ever let it get _that _far."

"And that's exactly why this one's as good as gone. In fact, I got twenty pounds that says it'll be dead—for real this time—before sunrise."

"For God's sake, Murphy, this is someone's life we're talking about—"

"Jackson, you know damn well that thing in there isn't any more alive than Henri VIII. Do yourself a favor: unwrap yourself from all that sentimental crap and remember what we're bloody here for."

There was a long pause, but Jake had this strange sense that he could feel the anger burning quietly in "Jackson." He could almost smell the way his compatriot's insensitivity made his blood boil like tomato soup on a cold, wintry night. Jake rubbed at his neck, rocking back and forth nervously. His throat was burning again, and suddenly he found himself so damned hungry and thirsty he was ready to scream and pound at the door. Hunger pangs moved from his stomach to his veins, aching horribly for nourishment like dying vines; encircling and tightening over his body.

He heard the men straighten suddenly. Probably at attention, Jake reasoned. Suddenly, a presence, like a warm blanket, draped over him. He was sure someone was about to come in, but he knew he couldn't move anyway, and besides, if he did, this feeling—the only good one he'd had in recent memory—might fade. The sensation grew stronger, and Jake sat with his back to the door, wondering what, or who, it was coming from.

* * *

Seras walked anxiously down the dim basement hallway, Integra's words echoing through her with every step. 

_"Taking a civilian, who isn't even old enough to be in the Army, putting him in harm's way, and then, completely disregarding the consequences, siring him?__I might have expected such flippant irresponsibility from Alucard, but you, Victoria? What the bloody Hell were you thinking?"_

_"Sir Hellsing, try to understand..."_

_"Understand what exactly? Your carelessness that led to his mortal __injury,__ or your impulsiveness that led to turning him? It seems perfectly clear to me that he should have died then and there. Our task is to root out undead scum, not create more of them! You didn't even know if he was a virgin or not."_

_Seras was silent. The word "scum" wouldn't have hurt so much had Integra not stated the reasons why she already felt that way._

_Integra's rage froze in an instant. "However, regardless of what _should _have happened, there is yet _another_ bloodsucker in my home. If I regret sparing his unlife even for a moment, you will be held responsible. Do you understand?"_

Seras came to the door where her new fledgling rested. The guards sidestepped, granting her access. Her hand lingered on the knob as questions swirled in her head. Would he hate her for dragging him into this? Would he be afraid of her? Would he even believe her?

She turned the knob yelped in surprised as her fledgling fell at her feet. The guards jumped and aimed their weapons. He looked up at her, glassy-eyed and weak.

"Where...am...I?"

* * *

A/N Well, I hope you enjoyed this little tidbit. Jake's got a _whole _lot more problems this time around, and being a bloodsucking creature of the night is only one of them. I hate to leave you hanging like this, but I plan to make it worthwhile. Now to finish that project I've put off for the last month before it's due in 9 hours. 


	3. Of Angels & Devils

Jake felt himself being lifted carefully off the ground, and was carried back to his bed. His vision was too blurry to see who it was, but he somehow felt an instinctual trust in this person, an aura that took away his fear and confusion.

"God, you must be starving." The voice was quiet, female, and undeniably familiar.

He was laid on his back with his head propped up on a pillow, so he could face his caregiver. Still, all he could see was an outline, not a solid figure. She rummaged through what looked like a cooler of some sort, and in moments he felt what seemed to be a straw in his mouth.

"Here, drink this. You'll feel better." There was a slight uncertainty to her voice, as though she felt guilty about something, but Jake was far too hungry to ask questions just yet. He inhaled, and what could only be described as heaven itself hit his tongue. Instantly, the ache in his stomach and veins disappeared. His strength returned; the fog in front of his eyes cleared. He was a little disappointed when a slurping sound ensued, informing him that the bag was empty. Now that he was finally able to see, he looked to his left.

And saw an angel smiling down at him. Her short, golden hair formed a halo around her soft face. She had gentle, crystalline blue eyes, her skin a glowing, fair peach color. She had a vertical, narrow scar at the base of her neck, though it did not blemish her in the slightest. She was dressed in what appeared to be some sort of Cop uniform, with a red and black checkered shield patched onto her shoulder, though he couldn't see the text on it. She seemed to be a little nervous about something; what he could not fathom. He was sure he'd seen her before, but strained to remember where from.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"Like I found an oasis in Death Valley. I can't thank you enough, Ms..."

"Seras Victoria.," she said, extending her white-gloved hand, "You can call me Seras. And you?"

He took it carefully, "Jake...Jake Rivers."

She pulled her hand away and looked aside for a moment, as if trying to find the right words.

"Jake, I know it's terrible, but I need to know how much you remember from last night."

"Last night..." He prayed she wasn't talking about the same "last night" he had in mind. It was probably a totally different "last night." Of course it couldn't have been the "last night" that in included zombies and rabid monsters. Neither existed, so what was he so worried about? Someone had probably spiked his drink at the club, he freaked out, fell off the stage and now he was...wait, where was he again?

"I don't mean to dodge the question, but could you tell me where I am?"

She sighed, as though gathering her strength for what she was about to relay. "You're in the basement floor of the HQ of the Hellsing Organization. We work for the secret Royal Order of Protestant Knights."

"That doesn't sound like a charity." Jake ventured, getting a brief smile from Seras. She collected herself again, and continued very cautiously.

"I don't really know how to tell you this without sounding like a loony, but the creatures that attacked your friends..."

"Wait," Jake interrupted, "creatures?" This couldn't have been going where he thought it was.

"They were vampires, Jake." She said, with a deathly seriousness that precluded any questioning. "The zombie-types following were their ghouls, the result of non-virgin humans drained by a vampire. Our mission, Hellsing's mission, is hunt them down and eliminate them."

Everything from that horrible night flashed through his mind: the bloodshed, the screaming, the inhuman howls, the man with the red eyes...

Jake took in a deep breath, trying to stop his jaw from quivering. "...and my friends?"

Seras shook her head.

"Oh my God..." a realization hit him, so quickly he almost shouted it. "That's when I saw you...I was injured on that fence...but, I'm still here, so how..?"

Seras swallowed hard, an ashamed expression tainting her features. "It was my fault."

Jake just stared in confusion. Her fault?

"The vampire who tried to take you hostage...I killed him just as he was clearing the fence. The reason you were wounded, the reason you're here and not at a hospital, is because of me."

"But how can that be if I'm not wounded now?" Jake protested.

That question only seemed to rub salt in it for Seras. Her hands fumbled with each other, as though trying to find a way to grasp the truth without cutting herself. It didn't work.

"The truth is, Jake, that while Hellsing's mission is to destroy the undead, it currently employs two of them. I am one of them."

Jake involuntarily pressed his back further into the headboard. "Wait, are you telling me that you're a..."

"Vampire." She finished, without any pride whatsoever. "You were mortally wounded. There was no hope for you to survive. I understand if you hate me, Jake, but the only way I could save you, was to turn you."

_Hell, we got two of '__em__, why not one more?_

_That thing in there isn't any more alive than Henri VIII_

On instinct, Jake put a finger into his mouth and felt over his canines. He pricked his finger and pulled it out immediately: fangs. He looked over to the empty plastic back he had drank out of minutes before. Transfusion Blood: type AB+. So that's what he had been craving so desperately; that was the miracle substance that had given him his stamina and enraptured his tongue. He strained to feel some kind of emotion from this, show some response, but there was nothing. No anger, no sorrow, or outrage, and certainly no ill will toward Seras; only a cold, undeniable certainty that, just as he had told Frank the previous night, things would never be the same again.

"What does all of this mean?" he asked, almost to himself.

"It's simple, fledgling." Responded a deep, lustful voice.

Jake's head snapped in all directions. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, including his own head.

"You must drink the blood of mortals to live."

Suddenly, a countenance that would burn itself into his mind forever stepped through the wall like an apparition. Unnaturally tall, wild black hair, eyes so red they looked like twin suns on a dusty afternoon. A grin as wide as a slit throat played on his face. He wore a long red coat, and white gloves with strange symbols on them. He stepped closer

"Sunlight will kill you, and silver burns your flesh like fire." He was now looking straight down at Jake, who felt like an ant with a cruel child staring down at him.

Seras' expression soured. "I've _got_ this covered, Alucard"

Jake just stared, overwhelmed by the aura of wrongness this guy emitted.

Alucard continued, ignoring her. "The police girl here is your Master, and as her fledgling, you are to serve, respect, and obey her in all things."

Jake looked at Seras, not totally sure what to do. He suddenly felt a huge hand grasp his face, forcing his glance back upward. Alucard's eyes drove hot needles through Jake's own, and just as Seras was about to protest, he scoffed and tossed Jake backward onto the bed.

Jake was just getting up as Alucard turned to leave, again, through the wall.

"You should have chosen more wisely, police girl. This one's a coward." He said, and left.

Jake looked at the wall that Alucard had left through.

"I'm sorry," said Seras "He's like that."

"Who the Hell is he?" asked Jake, rubbing his chin.

"My old Master, Alucard." She said thoughtfully. "He's been with Hellsing since...well, I'm not even sure."

Something didn't quite add up here. "Wait, if Hellsing's job is to kill vampires and all that, why do they _use _them?"

"That's a question for another time. For now, get some rest, alright?"

Her hand traveled to his. He felt his cheeks get warm as she said, "Things are going to get a little strange, even scary sometimes, but from now on, we're in this together, ok?"

"Ok...Master."

He couldn't explain it, but as Seras walked out the door, and he heard the door close, he was certain that whatever tomorrow brought, he could face it.

_After all,_ he thought, _I have an angel watching over me._

--------------

Seras closed the door behind her and sighed. This wasn't going to be easy for either of them. He had taken the news a little better than she expected, and thankfully, didn't seem to hold any ill will toward her. She would try to make the best of things as they were, give him time to adjust, but she still feared that he was too young to be able to handle the sort of work he was sure to be assigned.

_Not even half of your problems, police girl,_ resounded Alucard in her head.

_You didn't have to barge in like that,_ she thought back, annoyed.

_You know so little about siring a fledgling; I thought it my duty to intervene._

She rolled her eyes. _Well then, educate me._

_He is too young. You noticed how quickly his hunger struck him? His body is not fully mature, thus he will have to feed nearly twice as often._

Seras tried not to show any signs of being bothered. _So what? _She scoffed mentally, _two __bags __ a__ night __instead of one. What's the difference?_

_The more he__ hungers, the hard__er he will be to control._He added, with a crueler edge to his voice,_For__ this reason, Master has asked me to watch him closely. If he shows any signs of transgression, if he crosses his boundaries even in the slightest, I am to kill him._

Seras glared ahead, teeth clenched.

"He won't." she said aloud. "You'll see. He's going to make a fine Hellsing soldier. All he needs is a chance."

"I plan to give him several, police girl." He said, "Let's see if he takes them."


	4. Drafted

Jake was stirred by a resounding knock on the door.

"Come in." he said sleepily, wondering what time it was.

A man who looked like a mixture between Alfred and the monopoly guy stepped smoothly into the room. He wore a black suit, a shining monocle, and a disarming smile, bearing a stack of neatly-folded clothes in his arms.

"Good evening, Mr. Rivers. My name is Walter C. Dornez, retainer of the Hellsing family. Since you will be joining the Hellsing Organization, you'll need to dress the part."

He should have felt honored, but he found it a little strange that they would trust someone that they had literally plucked off the street. It was probably Seras' doing, he reasoned. "Alucard" certainly wasn't thrilled about it, and he imagined neither was the person who ran this place. Still, he thanked Walter and took the clothes.

"I hope you don't mind; your meeting with Sir Hellsing is not until nine o'clock. However, Ms. Victoria has asked me to wake you sooner so that she can, as she put it, 'prepare you.' She currently awaits you in her quarters, four doors down."

Jake nodded, and Walter left as gracefully as he came. Jake gave his new "uniform" the once-over, and found that it was very similar to Seras'. The shirt was royal blue, with the insignia of Hellsing on the arm and left breast pocket, a pair of multi-pocketed pants of the same color, white gloves, and black boots. The only deviations from Seras' dress were the long sleeves, and, of course, the pants.

Not wanting to keep his Master waiting, he put on everything on hurriedly, ran over to the bathroom and tamed his hair as best he could, when it occurred to him that he still had a reflection. What other myths about vampires weren't true?

_Well, I guess I'll have plenty of time to find out._

The hallways were dimly lit and the walls were all the same dull grey cobblestone that had made up his room. He stopped suddenly; he wasn't sure how, but he swore he felt eyes on him. He looked behind him. Nothing. No sound, no moving shadows. He tapped his foot on the ground, thinking that perhaps it was the echo of his footsteps tricking him into thinking he was being followed. But the tapping did not reverberate at all. It was as if this place insisted on being silent, snuffing out any sound above a whisper. He counted the door he'd passed; only two. His mind must have been playing tricks; it tended to do that when he was in close quarters like this.

He arrived at the fourth door, and immediately, that warm feeling came back again. Was it some kind of bond between fledglings and their masters? He supposed he could ask later. Not thinking, he opened the door, and just when he was about to say something, he froze.

Seras had a towel wrapped around her waist, facing away from him. Aside from noting her beautifully shaped shoulders, he saw more scars, identical to the one on her neck, running up and down her back at odd angles. He came back to himself and, before she even had a chance to turn, slammed the door shut, yelping about a half-dozen mortified apologies. She simply gave a surprised "Huh?" He could call himself an idiot all day and it still wouldn't be enough at this moment. His hand went to his face, trying to forget what he'd just seen. He gave up after five minutes.

"Come on in, Jake." called Seras from inside. He opened the door gingerly, expecting a firm slap or perhaps a punch, which was probably what he deserved. Instead, he was greeted with her warm smile.

"Well, I didn't expect Walter to wake you _this _early." She said, still patting her hair dry with the towel.

His face went flush as he began another litany of apologies. She cut him off at about his third.

"It's fine, Jake, really," She assured, "I'm just used to leaving the door unlocked, seeing how hardly anyone except Walter ever comes down here, and Alucard, well, you've seen how much he likes doors."

Jake relaxed a bit. He was glad she wasn't angry with him, but at the same time, although he couldn't understand why, he was also a little disappointed.

"Right," she began. "Sir Hellsing's going to need a little more convincing if she's going to agree to take you in with us. I thought it would be a good idea if we talked first."

"Ok, so where do we start?"

"Well, first off, how old are you?"

"17 since last month." He answered, then realized that adding "since last month" made him sound like a child.

"Hmm," Seras looked uncertain. "And you're from the States, is that right?

"Yeah," he admitted, "That's bad, isn't it?"

Seras sighed, "Well, it's not going to be easy, but I think we can pull it off."

---------------

Seras straightened Jake's collar and took one last look at him. "You look great."

He shifted uncomfortably. "Uh, thanks."

"It'll be fine." She reassured, "Just remember everything I told you. Stay at attention, be respectful, and don't talk unless Sir Hellsing asks you something."

He nodded. Though nervous beyond belief, he was eager to please his Master, particularly one who had shown him nothing but kindness in the face of all the horrors he'd seen, and would no doubt see again. He forced a smile, which he was sure she caught. Nonetheless, she smiled back. It reminded him of a mother seeing her child off to his first day of school.

He came upon the stairs, which were a single, massive flight. He was surprised he was not exhausted by the time he made it to the top. Another steel door. He pressed a button on the side, and the door slid open. He noted with some interest that what was on the other side was not a door, but a painting. Hellsing's vampires were a secret well kept. He memorized the painting and continued on.

There were a few soldiers walking briskly up and down the halls. They greeted him with cold stares, or avoided looking at him altogether. Those who were speaking stopped whenever he drew near, and resumed in hoarse whispers whenever he passed. He tried to ignore them, but he could hear them so clearly he'd have to cover his ears.

"So that's the new one, is it? Christ, doesn't even look old enough for the Army." said one

"I hear he's a yank." said another.

"No bloody way, really? Why do you suppose he was turned? The lady vamp get lonely?" the first chided.

"Damned if I know. At this rate, every squad in Hellsing's gonna get their own."

"Hell, I don't mind. Let _them_ take the bullets for us."

"You look lost."

It was a voice Jake had not yet heard, and surprisingly, it was friendly. He turned to see a man of medium build, with sandy brown hair and a pleasant face. He looked fairly young, though older than him by at least half a decade. Jake knew right away that civility would be a rare commodity among the soldiers here, so he took it where it was offered.

"I was looking for Sir Hellsing's office." He said shyly.

"Up those stairs, second door on your right." He said.

"Thanks," he said, turning to leave.

"Hey kid," said the soldier, "What's your name?"

He was in a hurry, but didn't want to be rude. "Oh, Jake Rivers."

"Mick Ferguson," he said, offering his hand. "Chances are, since Seras is in my squad, you will be, too."

Jake took Mick's hand, a little relieved that at least _one_ person here didn't treat him like a leper.

"I look forward to working with ya," said Mick.

"Yeah, same here." He replied. "Well, I better go, don't want to keep Sir Hellsing waiting, right?"

"You said it, kid. Good luck. I suspect you'll need it."

Mick waved him off, and Jake followed his direction. He knocked on the plain, wooden door.

"It's open." said a stern, annoyed voice.

He walked in, and saw, for himself, the person his Master had spent the last hour and a half preparing him for.

Long, whitish hair ran down pale cheeks, cut an inch or two below the jaw line. A pair of spectacles glinted in the frail light of the room. Jake didn't understand how anyone could see with the lights so dim. It was so quiet the subtle scraping of pen against paper seemed deafening to him. The noise faded away, and Sir Hellsing looked up.

Apparently, she noticed his surprise. Her eyes narrowed. Jake felt two icicles piercing his chest.

"You're Victoria's fledgling, correct?" she did not say it loudly, but her voice held an overpowering presence, like the barrel of a pistol pressed against the throat. Here was the woman Seras had warned him about, the woman that could slice throats with a word, and cut down a score of men with a sentence.

"Yes sir." He said firmly.

She opened a file on her desk and fingered through it. "Jacob Rivers…" she said, as though the mere sound of his name was abominable, "You were taken into a Catholic boarding school for several years. Do you still consider yourself of that persuasion?"

_Remember, always answer honestly. _"No, Sir."

"Good," she said joylessly, "I can allow no vestige of popery in my ranks. What of your home country? Do your loyalties lie there?"

"Not really, Sir."

"Typical." she didn't scoff, but Jake imagined she did. She closed the file and looked back at him, and suddenly, his own sense of presence in the room went from small to microscopic.

"Tell me, Rivers," she began, with a cold dismissal that made Jake feel as though cold water had been dumped on him, "why should I bother with a third vampire in my ranks? What advantages would a fledgling bloodsucker such as yourself provide that I do not already possess?"

_She'll try to grill you, belittle you, but don't be frightened. She's like that to everyone at first. No matter how cold-hearted and hateful she seems to be, it's only a test._

"Insurance, Sir Hellsing." He answered, trying not to sound as rehearsed as it was. "With another vampire at your disposal, you can afford greater protection for your men."

"So that's it?" she asked, unimpressed. "And what protection would a teenaged former musician provide?"

"All I need is training and a chance, Sir Hellsing." He said, keeping the straightest face he could put on.

"In that case..." she began, rising from her seat and walking five feet in front of him. He looked him straight in the eyes and resumed. "Let me appraise you as to the situation you have found yourself in. Your existence at this moment is made possible not by my kindness, mercy, or even curiosity; but tolerance. In return for your unlife, you are to serve the Hellsing Organization in _any _manner that is asked of you. Victoria and Alucard will be in charge of preparing you. Your task for now, however, is to show me that speaking to you was worth five minutes of my time. From this point on, you are a soldier of Hellsing, like any of the humans here. Your loyalties are now to God, Her Majesty, and myself; all others are to be discarded. Do _not_ disgrace the insignia on your shoulder. Understand?"

"Yes, Sir Hellsing." He said, feigning all the confidence he could muster.

"You are dismissed." She returned to her paperwork.

She didn't have to tell him twice.


	5. Day 1

A/N: Hey guys! Sorry the updates have been so slow, but life's been way too fast. It's 200 hours and I'm dead tired. I hope by the time I wake up I'll be able to read my first review. Which of you is going to fulfill that dream, I wonder? Blah blah here's your fanfics

Belated Disclaimer: I don't own Hellsing, so don't bitch, Kouta Hirano

_August 16, 2007_

_I'm writing this because, from what I'm told, I'm going to liv__e for a very long time. I think that since__ "eternity," if there is such a thing, awaits me, __then__ I'm going to need some reminder that time is still passing. The sun certainly can't do that for me anymore, and__ a clock can only tell so much. A time might come where I've lived so long that I won't be able to tell one year from another.__ It's probably good that I keep some kind of record, so as to remind myself that, immortal or not__, I am still __me.__ I wonder if anyone will ever read it._

_Now that the shock of what I am has started to wear off, I'm beginning to notice how different it is being undead. I have no heartbeat that I can feel, and when I draw breath it's more out of habit than necessity. My sen__se of touch has changed little;__ I can still feel pain, __which I tested by pricking a finger__, and I also found that my skin healed the moment it was punctured.__ My eyes and ears have suddenly become disturbingly acute: if I listen hard enough, I can hear the footsteps of people coming down the stairs as far as my room, even though there's no echo down here.__ When I turn the lights off in my room, I can still see as if it were plain as day.__ My skin hasn't paled like I was expecting, and the only change in my outward appearance are the fangs, and I don't even notice them until I look in a mirror or bite my tongue accidentally.__So, at least from that standpoint, everything is actually better than before_

_When I got down to my room, mentally exhausted after my ordeal with Sir Hellsing, I was a little surprised to see, in an ice box, with a wine glass and a bowl, a bag of transfusion blood__. For the longest time, I just stared at it, puzzled, like it was some kind of riddle I needed to solve. I started thinking about the last meal I had; two cheeseburgers, extra mayo and no lettuce, a large fry, and a Dr. Pepper. __I haven't been undead twenty-four hours, and already I find myself mis__sing processed food__. I pushed it in to the icebox and shut the lid, trying to ignore my hunger for the time being, but even as I closed the door behind me and wandered the cold, dark halls,__ I could feel it pulling at me__ ever so gently__, like a little kid __at my side, tugging me by the arm as we pass__ by a candy store._

_Seras, my Master, __went on a mission almost immediately after I left Sir Hellsing's office. Even knowing what I do, it's hard for m__e to see her as a vampire. While it's true that I barely know her at this point, __I can already tell that she's a kind soul__I mean,__ I don't care _what_ she says: she gave me a second chance, __and__ if I read Sir Hellsing right__, got herself into trouble because of it__ Isn't that proof enough that she has a heart? Of all the vampires that could have __turned me, I'm grateful that it's her.__ I can't wait to get to know her better. She may be my Master, but I hope that won't prevent us from be__com__ing friends._

_I think that Alucard's gone with her. __I've only seen him for all of two minutes, and already I can tell he doesn't like me. __There's something about him I don't really like either,__ but__ I'm not sure what it is. I imagine that, just like I'll have plenty of time to get to know Seras, I'll have just as much to figure out why my skin crawls and my gut tightens when he looks at me._

_I'm hearing footsteps coming down the stairs.__ Somehow, I know__ it's Seras, so I'd better stop for now. __Until tomorrow night._

_-----------------_

Seras walked down the dank hallway with an unusually brisk walk. Any other night she would have taken her time, since all that awaited her down here was her coffin. But tonight was different. Tonight she had something, or more accurately, someone, that awaited her eagerly enough that he had emerged from his door to greet her halfway down the hall.

"How did it go, Master?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Well enough. It was over in less time than it took to get there. So, how about we go up to gym and get things started?"

Jake looked confused. "You mean you're not tired, from the mission and all?"

Seras smiled. "Not even a little bit." She turned and motioned for him to follow. "Come on, now, we're burning moonlight down here. It's about 1:00 am, so we should have the gym to ourselves."

Jake followed, and Seras could tell very easily that beneath his nervousness, he was just as eager to learn as she was to teach. This new sense of purpose elated her as she ascended the steps, hearing her fledgling trail closely behind, no doubt wondering what she had in store for him. It would be this way for a good while; he had much to learn, and unlike her old master, she planned to guide him through ever step of the way.

Seras had spent most of the transit time on her mission thinking on how best to break him in to this line of work. She figured the gym would a good place to get his bearings. Once they arrived, she pushed through the double-doors and found that, to her relief, the gym was empty. Being gawked or glared at by training soldiers wouldn't help him learn any faster. She walked over to a set of weights on the ground.

"Alright then," she began, her voice a little more chipper than usual. "Consider this Vampirism 101."

She began taking off the smaller weights on the crossbar, and adding the largest ones available. She picked up the crossbar effortlessly, eliciting a surprised gasp from Jake. He looked at her as though she had grown horns.

"Your first lesson: know what you can do." She offered him the crossbar and looked at him expectantly.

Jake just stared at it, unsure of what to do.

"Come on, give it a lift."

He pointed at it incredulously. "But that has to be at least a eighty kilos! There's no way I could—"

"Think fast!" she said suddenly, tossing the crossbar to him. The sooner he got over his skepticism, the better. Jake recoiled, but his reflexes were a better than he realized. He fumbled for a moment, but caught it nonetheless. He recovered from his flinch, and looked in awe at the weight in his hands. He blinked a few times, lifting it up and down, still in disbelief.

"Now, see how easy that was? It's for everybody's benefit that you know exactly what you're capable of. Remember, that no matter what, you're stronger and faster than the strongest, fastest soldier here."

Jake set down the weights gently and scratched the back of his head. "And to think, PE used to be my worst subject."

"No need for push ups, laps, or aerobics to keep it up." She said thoughtfully. "Be mindful of it, now; a firm handshake could put someone in the ER."

"I'll have to remember that." Said Jake, looking at his hands as if they were something alien to him.s

"Well, since that's out of the way, let's do something fun." She guided him over to a mat and took her boots off. Jake mimicked her, doubtless not very unsure where she was going with this. Seras noticed that he was about four inches taller than her, though considering how green he was, it didn't matter much. She stood about two meters from him on the mat, and raised her fists in a boxer's pose. "Put up your dukes."

He face screwed in confusion. "Huh?"

She smiled and explained. "If you're going to be a soldier, you're going to have to learn to fight."

"But from you?"

"You can't expect a human to teach a vampire such things; that would be a disaster waiting to happen. Besides, it's just practice. So, don't be shy and show me what you got."

It took a while, but slowly, Jake began to get the hang of it. The hardest thing was getting him not to be so gentle with her. That and whenever he got _too_ close to her, he would suddenly freeze up out of embarrassment. He got over that after about the sixth time his face hit the mat. It wasn't that he was slow; in fact, Seras would even say he was a natural. He just had this habit, one that he needed to break if he was to fight for Hellsing.

Seras helped him off the ground. "Not bad for the first time, but you really need to stop holding back. You didn't press the attack near as hard as you could have."

He grimaced, and said quietly, like a scolded child. "I'm sorry, Master. I'll try to--"

"Hey now," she cut him off with a smile and pushed his glance back to her. "Let's have none of that. We've got plenty of time to work on it, ok?" She winked playfully.

Jake blushed a moment, and then, for the first time since she had known him, he smiled back.

"Ok, Master."

Seras stretched and let out a fang-bearing yawn. "Well, dawn's approaching. We'd better get some sleep. Tomorrow we'll start on shooting."

Jake began pulling of his gloves, and Seras saw that on the tips of all of his fingers, were little gray scars, about the size of small coins. Jake must have caught her looking at them, and let his arms go to his sides, obscuring her view.

"I didn't mean to stare."

"Don't worry, I get that a lot. I put my hands on a stove top when I was little. Singed the skin right off."

Something bothered Seras about this story. Maybe it was the dismissive way he told it, or the barely perceptible crack in his voice. Or perhaps, most of all, it was that he himself seemed to believe it so readily while something in Seras told her otherwise. Still, it wasn't her place to pry.

"Doesn't sound like fun." said Seras, trying to keep any suspicion out of her voice.

"It wasn't," again, that slight crack. "My Dad rushed me to the emergency ward, and they had to scrape the burnt skin off with a file."

His story was detailed and perfectly plausible. Why should she question it? Why should she even think any more on the matter, cracking voice or not?

"While we're on the subject," she began, "you have family or friends that would be looking for you, right?"

"No." he said simply. "About a week after I got these scars, they died in a car crash. I made it out with a broken leg." He cleared his throat, as though something caught in it. "No one should be looking for me."

"...Oh" she replied, not sure how else to react. "I'm sorry."

He waved a hand dismissively. "It was a long time ago."

"I lost my parents when I was young, too." Seras admitted. "It wasn't a car crash, though. But that's a story for another time. Let's hit the dirt. You've worn me out."

He nodded, and they stepped down into the basement. Seras idly wondered why Jake didn't ask about her own scars. She was sure he'd seen them at his "walk-in." He was probably too embarrassed. She hoped he would never have to find out what—or more precisely, who—was the source of _that _story.

But just like the loss of her family, it was a story for another time.

Seras turned to open her door, adding just before she went inside: "Get plenty of sleep. Tomorrow, we'll be going to the shooting range. Ever shot a gun before?"

"I've never even seen one, outside of movies." he admitted.

"Well, that's going to have to change. Goodnight, Jake."

"I look forward to it. Goodnight, Master."

Seras closed her door and was getting ready to undress, when she felt a familiar, cold tingle.

"Why don't you tuck him in and kiss him goodnight while you're at it?" said a deep voice.

Seras' brow furrowed in annoyance and sighed. "So my methods are a little different than yours. He is _my_ fledgling after all. I'm just making the transition a little easier, that's all."

"Police girl, what you're doing is coddling him." He remarked dryly from the chair he sat upon

She grinded her teeth and ignored her old nickname. "Well, I can't just throw everything at him at once and expect results, can I?"

Alucard smiled cruelly. "It worked for you."

"Only because I knew how to hold my own already." Seras pointed out, "Jake doesn't have any experience at all with fighting anything, even with humans. Plus, like you said before, he's young. I can't put too much on him at once."

"All reasons you should never have turned him in the first place." he said in flat, even tone.

Seras' voice rose involuntarily. She walked into the bathroom, speaking through her teeth. "Well, if you don't have any more 'helpful' advice on the matter, _goodnight_."

Alucard's smile widened. Try as she might, getting angry only encouraged him. Thus, she was surprised, and a little disturbed, when Alucard tilted his hat, bowed mockishly, and left.

"Goodnight, police girl."

"And stop calling me that!" she shouted after him.

random pointless footnote: According to Microsoft word, this journal entry is precisely 666 words. I'm so easily distracted.


	6. Learning

Jake grimaced at the target board sliding toward him from the fifty yard mark.

"God, that sucked."

Out of the eight shots the magazine held, only 3 of them hit the paper at all, and none even touched the body. Worst of all, that was actually an improvement over his first volley, which only hit the paper once, and one actually hit the target _beside_ his own, getting a few laughs out of the few other soldiers that were practicing at the time.

Seras giggled under her breath a little. "The irony of that statement aside, the point was for you to get comfortable with a gun in your hands. Now that you know how it works, I can show a little trick to aiming that only vampires can use."

"What kind of trick?"

Seras took the .45 from him and smiled slyly. "I'm so glad you asked."

She loaded the magazine in with _click_ and aimed with one hand. Unlike him, she didn't close one eye, or even favored one or the other in lining up the sight. Eight shots. 100 meters. All headshots, at or near the center. One-inch grouping.

"Jesus." He muttered. "How did you do that?"

"Easy," she said with what was by now her trademark friendly, student-teacher grin. "I shot with my third eye."

Jake responded with what was undoubtedly his trademark look of confusion. "That's a metaphor, right?"

"Sort of. It's a vampiric sense that's centered here." She put a finger on his forehead. "Shoot from there, and you'll put Annie Oakley to shame."

Jake's skepticism reared its head, telling him how nonsensical all of that was. But in what little experience he had so far, common sense—at least the kind he was used to—had very little to do with being a vampire. He took the gun and aimed it at the target.

_Third eye, huh?_

He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to picture it in his head. He opened them, and suddenly, the target seemed as though it were ten feet in front of him. Four shots. He blinked and the distance returned to normal. There was a buzz and the target slid toward him again.

"Whoa..."

One pierced an ear, two hit the left eye, and one in the chin.

She slapped him on the shoulder good-humoredly. "Now _that's _shooting like a proper vampire."

"Did_ I _really do that?" he uttered.

"You most certainly did. Give it another try."

He emptied a few magazines into the target, each grouping a little tighter than the last. Once he'd gotten comfortable with pistols, they'd moved on to a rifle, then to a shotgun. It was almost surreal; Jake felt as though he was using a cheat code in a video game. He was taking to this well. Disturbingly well. Every time he pulled the trigger, he felt he was getting closer to something, though he wasn't sure what.

"You catch on fast." Seras commented.

"Yeah...I do, don't I?" he said quietly. It was so strange; he never would have thought he would have a knack for this sort of thing. It shouldn't have felt right, but for some reason, it did.

He rubbed his throat. It was burning again. He hadn't "eaten" since two days ago, and his hunger had been pulling at him on and off. It didn't make sense to him, but Jake was sure that somehow what he was doing had brought it on. Suddenly, his head began to hurt and his legs felt weak. He teetered sideways.

Seras caught him and he slumped against her. He hated looking so weak in front of her, especially just after she had expressed a tiny bit of pride in him.

"I'm sorry, Master."

"You're hungry, aren't you?" she asked softly, so only he could hear.

"Yeah, I am." He said, ashamed of the fact.

Seras slung one of his arms over her shoulder. "Let's get you back to the basement. I'm sure Walter already has it taken care of."

----

Integra Hellsing sat at her desk, rubbing her temples in irritation. Another migraine. She'd been having a lot of those lately. Her problem was exacerbated by a knock on the door.

"Come in, Walter." she knew it was him by the manner in which he knocked.

He stepped in, carrying a tray with a glass of water and a tiny plastic cup with two pills in it.

"Something for your head, Sir Integra." He said, offer her the tray's contents.

She sighed and took both. "Thank you, Walter. What have you recovered on Rivers' background?"

"Well," he began, straightening himself, "we know that he's not a legal English immigrant, though he has resided here for roughly a year and half. Before then, he lived in Los Angeles, in the United States. As you know, he was admitted into a Catholic school at age seven, following the supposed death of his family.

Integra raised an eyebrow. "Supposed?"

"I say 'supposed,' because, while the official story is that they died in a car crash, there is no trace of an autopsy report for his father or sister."

"Were they important people?" asked Integra.

"Not in any observable way," said Walter thoughtfully, "They lived in a rather seedy part of town; the father was a factory worker, and the mother died a year after Jake's birth of a heroine overdose."

"Odd..." Integra mused.

"Also worthy of note is that in the period between his family's death and his admission into the St. Bernard Catholic School, there is record of his stay at the hospital, for a broken leg, as well as a period of six months at a psychiatric hospital."

"A mental hospital?" said Integra, "For what?"

"All the record states is severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder," Walter adjusted his monocle, "No other details exist on his treatment or the conditions of his release."

Integra considered this for a moment. The fledgling's past had some fairly severe holes in it. True, it didn't seem like he had anyone left to ask questions, but at the same time, the vital question had to be asked.

"Be honest with me, Walter. Can we trust him?"

"It's too early to tell for sure, Sir Integra. But from what I observe, even if he is not loyal to the crown, Hellsing, or God, I think it's quite safe to say that he _is _loyal to his Master, Ms. Victoria. It would be difficult to imagine a circumstance in which he would betray her, and therefore, us. And as for whether or not he might take a bite out of one the soldiers, he hadn't touched the blood I gave him the last two nights."

"So what you're saying is that his motivations are precisely the same as Seras' when she began to work for us?"

"From what can be gathered in two days time, yes."

A small tinge of what looked like regret passed over Integra's eyes. "Perhaps I was overzealous in having Alucard be his watchdog. I'll have to talk to him about that later."

------------------

Seras set Jake down in the chair beside the table. She pulled one up beside him and sat down, opening the lid of the icebox, which, as she knew it would be, had just been delivered.

She pulled one of the two bags out and gave it to Jake, who took it a little hesitantly. He stared at it, as though it were a bitter medicine.

"Jake, I know it feels wrong. For the longest time, I refused to drink. But unless you want to trade in your bed for a closed coffin, there's no way around it."

His eyes went wide at the word "closed." For only a moment, Seras felt a wave of deep-seated, almost primal fear coming from him.

"What do you mean when you say that?" he asked.

"Well, if you don't drink blood, then you'll have to sleep in a coffin with the soil of your birthplace inside it. Otherwise, you'll only get weaker, and eventually, starve."

He seemed to consider it for a moment, obviously between a rock and a hard place.

"It won't make you a monster, Jake. You're just taking what you need from people who volunteered it. Think of it like your salary, in return for your services."

"And if I drink, I won't have to sleep in a coffin?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, trying to sound encouraging without being pushy, "plus, you'll actually be stronger than you would be if you'd slept in a coffin without drinking."

Jake gave the bag one last, long look, no doubt asking himself what lines he was crossing by doing this. She did the same when she first drank. Seras felt a small wave of vampiric pride come over her as she watched her fledgling tear open the bag, bring it slowly to his lips, and drink. He lowered the empty bag and sighed. She patted him on the back and said reassuringly:

"See? You're a soldier cashing his first paycheck."

He did not say anything to this, but placed the empty bag in the icebox, next to the second one and closed the lid. He was silent for a while, contemplating what he had done, and said finally:

"Master, do you still think of yourself as human, even a little bit?"

Seras paused. She wasn't sure what kind of answer he was expecting, but she decided to be honest about it.

"In many ways, I think, yes."

Much to Seras' satisfaction, Jake smiled and said, "Good. Then there's hope for me, too."


	7. A Ripple in the Pond

A/N Hey guys. This chapter was a while coming. Truth be told, it took too damn long. But it's a big one, so I hope it was worth the wait! For all my old friends, tell me how my revisions are stacking up to the old one. For all my new friends, just tell me how it's stacking up period.

_January 22_

_Seras is off on a mission now. I know I'm far from combat-ready, but I can't help feeling like I should be by her side, even if she doesn't really need me. I have a huge debt to pay, and when I'm not being taught by her, I feel idle, useless, like an unwelcome guest. I do what I can to keep busy. I go to the shooting range and try to improve my accuracy. So far 4"at a hundred yards is the best I can do, even with the eye trick Seras taught me. When I think I've used up enough bullets, I go to the library and learn all that I can, to try and stay ahead of the game. Walter provided me with a volume on Hellsing's history, it's research and findings on vampires and ghouls, even records of older enemies that were eliminated. I always feel a small puff of pride whenever I see one that my Master took out. There are pieces missing from it, though: I couldn't find any information on Alucard, and the history section cuts off at eighty years back. When I asked Walter about this, he shrugged and said "Security reasons. You understand; we can't have soldiers in the field that a clever enemy could extract vital information from."_

_It sounded reasonable to me, so instead of pressing the issue, I just moved on to some other books. I almost laughed when I saw a copy of _Dracula _sitting on the shelf next to "references," but in the end, I picked it up anyway. It might be interesting to see if Stoker knew what he was talking about. _

_I don't see much of Alucard, but when I do, he never speaks to me. He just gives me a look like I'm something he wouldn't feed to a starving rat, and passes me by. Maybe it's just my imagination, but I get this weird feeling that he's always watching me, just waiting for me to screw up. I never thought I'd say this, but I can't wait for combat. I'll show him just how wrong he is about me, and Seras that all her hard work hasn't gone to waste._

Jake checked the clock: 5:30pm. A little early from the established routine, but he was getting in the habit of rising earlier, so as to make the most out of his day—or night. He felt it was important to show that he was focused, staying in sight and busy as often as possible, even if that meant emptying clips at a shooting range full of irritated, uneasy soldiers, two hours before his Master rose. Besides, it wasn't as if he slept very well here. His body didn't to protest; he felt no less energy that before. That is, so long as he ate his first meal of the day.

Blood...he mused, staring at the ice bucket on the table.

It used to be that the sight of it would make him dizzy and nauseous. Now it was being without it for more than 12 hours that made him feel the same, along with those horrible hunger pangs that encompassed every vein in his body, like dry roots seeking water. When he thought about it, there were plenty of reasons to drink it: to keep his strength, to avoid distraction from hunger, so Seras wouldn't worry about him. But when he was being honest with himself, there were only two that gave him the courage to tear off the lid and pour it down his dry, aching throat.

The first was to avoid sleeping in a closed coffin. All his life he had always been severely claustrophobic; and if just the lack of windows in his room made him uneasy, and if getting shoved into a locker at age 12 had nearly given him a heart attack, he didn't want to imagine what sleeping in a pine box might do.

The second was a little harder to deal with: it was delicious. He didn't _want _to enjoy it, but he did. Drinking it was an experience all to itself. It was smooth, sweet, and filled him a strange vigor he had never felt before becoming a vampire. It reminded Jake vaguely of a caffeine high; the sudden rush of energy, the need to be in movement and doing something. And yet, if he didn't drink his second helping before bed, he couldn't sleep. He'd never thought at any point in his life that he would become so dependant, so, for lack of a better word, addicted, to a single substance, though so far, his body hadn't demanded any more than he was given.

At least, not yet.

He put the empty bag in the trash beside the desk and closed the lid on the remaining one. He wasn't about to get into the habit of drinking two at a time; and under no circumstances would he ask Walter for any more. What would he think if he did? Moreover, what would Seras think?

He decided not to worry about it, and instead focused on making himself look presentable. While Seras never said this outright, he knew it to be true: if he looked bad, then she looked bad, and that was the last thing he wanted. Looking formal, however, was not his strong-suit. In the end he let his hair fall partially over his eyes, and tried to make sure his uniform looked right, but after fumbling with his waistline for ten minutes, he began to realize just how futile all of this was. It didn't matter how he looked; he was a yankee bloodsucker in a mansion full of people who liked neither. It was a lot like his old Catholic school, only the kids didn't normally carry around M5s, and the school bully couldn't walk through walls.

But the least he could do for Seras was not embarrass her. Jake finally straightened the waist and the belt-line, opened his steel door and walked into the dimly-lit hall. His moves from there had become rather formalized: go to the range, ignore the distrusting looks from the soldiers, try to improve his groupings with various weapons, and read in his room until Seras wakes up at around 8:00pm which he looked forward to immensely.

Jake felt that by-now familiar rush of warmth and put down the his copy of _Dracula _when he heard a knock on his door.

"Come in, Master."

* * *

Seras grabbed Jake by the wrist and tripped him, catching him in a headlock.

"Now what did I tell you about being soft with me?" she jokingly chastised.

Jake struggled, trying to wiggle free of her grip, but to no avail. "I'm not, I swear! You're too fast."

"Flattery will get you nowhere." She said with a smirk.

She let him go and went back to a ready position. "Besides," she added "you have advantages of your own, you know. You're taller."

They circled around each other, reading body language and setting their footing.

"I didn't realize that was an advantage."

This time, Jake took initiative. He faked once to the left, which Seras saw through in an instant. She countered by stepping forward to throw off his angle of attack, but then, as though he expected it, he sidestepped and grabbed her by the shoulder and tried to pull her into a throw. She spun in a 180 degrees arc and found her footing, reciprocating the move on him. Then _he _found his footing, and backed into her sharply. He got his grip on her right wrist, about to throw her over his shoulder...

Seras landed on her feet and pinned him against the padded wall, there faces scarcely an inch apart.

"Nice," she said proudly, "almost had me there."

Jake face went flush. "Um, thanks."

Seras backed down and resisted a giggle. "I think that's enough for one night."

It was painfully obvious to Seras that he was attracted to her. But then again, so was she to Alucard when she was a fledgling. It must have been a sort of vampiric, adolescent phase. She was sure he would grow out of it when he became Nosferatu, just as she did.

"Keep this up and you'll be combat-ready soon." She said as they walked through the painting-laden corridor, past a group of soldiers heading toward the shooting range. They eyed Jake suspiciously as they moved on, and he sighed uneasily.

Seras gave an assuring smile. "They'll get used to you after a while, once they realize you're not going to crack them open and drain them out."

It didn't seem to help him much. Perhaps he was already aware of the fact that even if they did get used to him, the vast majority would never really accept him. It was just a fact of life for being a part of Hellsing's vampire unit.

The intercom clicked on as a stern voice brayed out its commands. "Squads A and B fall in at 1100 hours. Details upon briefing."

"Oh bloody Hell." She groaned, "Another one crawls out of the hole." She turned to Jake and put a hand on his shoulder. "Well, I'm off. Don't wait up on me; I might be a while."

"Ok, Master." said Jake.

"Oh, and stop calling me 'Master.'" She chided playfully. "It makes me feel like I'm in some cheap kung fu flick. Just 'Seras' is fine."

A modest smile crept up his face. "Yes Mas—I mean Seras."

"Right then, see you soon."

Seras waved, and as she made her way to the briefing room, she had become very aware of the fact that with that simple request, she had gotten that much closer to him, which she hoped was a good thing. While she would never admit it to Alucard, she really didn't have much idea of what she was doing in this venture of siring a fledgling. Seras supposed that, just like a parent raising a child, she could only do what she thought was right, and then hope for the best.

_He won't end up in the gutter, _she thought to herself, _he cares too much. _

* * *

When Seras disappeared down the hall, Jake walked away with even more elation than he usually did after training with her. All he could think about was how lucky he was, to be the fledgling of someone like her. Surely she was a better master than— 

"What's with that smile, fledgling?"

—Alucard...

Jake shrieked and whipped around. He was without his usual hat and glasses, so Jake could very clearly see his eyes bore into his skull like twin power drills. And that damned smile, that predatory grin that seemed permanently cut into his face. It was subtle right now, a sly curve that Jake understood on an almost primal level. A snake didn't need to use its venom; it just needed you to know it could.

"N-nothing...I was just heading back to my room." He stammered, broadcasting to Alucard how easily he could inspire fear in him. Alucard might go away if he felt his power had been asserted. This game felt eerily familiar to Jake; in fact, he was sure he'd played it many times before, but with who?

"Resting already? But the night's just started."

Alucard's grin widened, and suddenly, Jake knew that the snake had stopped rattling its tail, and was coiling itself, preparing for the killing strike. He turned slowly, though Jake jumped regardless, and said seductively:

"Follow me."

Alucard strode out of the hallway and toward the mansion's main entrance, and Jake, not knowing how to object, obliged him. How did Alucard do this to him? How did he create such a palpable wave of nausea and chills without even having to try? He had no reason to believe—apart from his obvious disdain for him—that wanted to hurt him. Besides, they were fighting on the same side: why would he hurt an ally?

They had already gone a ways away from the mansion and beyond the outer gate, when Jake's fear of Alucard in general was suddenly outweighed by his fear of being alone with him.

"Where are we going?" he asked quietly, as if it were mere suggestion.

Alucard didn't answer, which was a better result than Jake imagined. Even before tonight, Alucard always seemed to act like he knew something, like he was the keeper of some big secret. It should have made him angry, but instead, it only made his presence that more unbearable. Maybe it wasn't that he might never know, but rather, he was afraid that Alucard just might be cruel enough to tell him.

They were in the forest now. The crickets' chirping got quieter and quieter, and eventually disappeared completely. Jake had always hated the woods at night, and even being able to see in the dark hadn't changed that. He was struck with a feeling of déjà vu, and remembered a joke Hans had told him a long time ago, about a boy and a murderer walking through the woods. The boy said 'I'm scared,' and the murderer responded 'You're scared? I'm the one who has to walk out of here alone.'

Jake swallowed hard. He almost bumped into Alucard when he realized he had stopped.

"I think it's time someone gave you an accurate assessment of your strengths and weaknesses."

Alucard turned, and before Jake could even cry out for help, pulled out a silenced .45 pistol and shot him in the head. He watched it as if he were in slow motion. He felt the contact of the bullet, its heat scorching his skin as tore through it in a circular motion, the contact with his skull, and then the noise; that overpowering crunch of his skull being breached, cracked like an egg stabbed with a needle. The pressure of it pushing his brains aside as it made room for itself.

He lay on the wet, muddy grass; paralyzed. Blind. Dead.

* * *

Seras sat in one of Hellsing's newest silent choppers, halfway to France for the scheduled freak removal. It was times like this that she felt more like an exterminator than a soldier. It was probably just another stupid weak-blood with too much free time and no common sense. She understood why Alucard pined for a challenge after almost a century of work like this. 

She sat beside Mick, the only one willing to share the two-seater section divided by the main door and weapon rack with her.

"So how's it going with the kid?" he asked.

"Not bad at all," she said proudly, "Just today he almost threw me in CQC."

"So, he might just have what it takes after all"

"What you mean 'after all.'" She said, only half-defensively.

"Well, if you want me to be honest," Mick began, taking a long drag from his cigarette, "I thought he was a little too highly strung for this line of work."

Seras laughed to the point of near-hysteria. The other soldiers gave her strange looks, but that only made her laugh harder.

"I don't know what the hell you guys are passing around, but save some for me!" Shouted the co-pilot.

Seras quieted herself and turned her attention back to a confused and slightly put-off Mick.

"I'm sorry," she wiped the beginnings of tears out of her eyes. "It's just that your granddad said the same thing about me when I first joined."

"Well stone the fucking crows..." Mick said with a nostalgic smile, "I'd better remind myself not to speak too soon then."

"Well, you do have a point—

* * *

_—He _is_ a little timid."_

"Get up fledgling." said Alucard dismissively. "You're fine."

"You...shot me...in the head..." he said, so shocked he hardly noticed that the brain matter was re-growing itself, pushing the bullet out of its snug position in his medulla.

"How observant you are." He said irritably, "I didn't even use my _real _gun, now stand back up."

_"You think he'll get over it faster?"_

He brought a hand to his wound, and realized, to his amazement, that nothing remained but a small patch of drying blood.

"I said," Alucard pulled Jake to his feet by his shirt collar, "Stand _up_!"

Jake, still dizzy, felt himself being shoved backward against a tree, barely keeping on his own two legs. Alucard's condescending leer was only a steadily clearing blur, but he could still detect the growing impatience in his voice.

_"I won't know until his first mission, but..."_

When his vision cleared, he found Alucard was still pointing the gun at him. He fired. A bullet seared through his chest and hit the bark on the other side. One of his lungs collapsed as he cried out and writhed in pain. Alucard's finger tightened on the trigger, and Jake turned away in anticipation of more pain.

_"But what?"_

"Why are you flinching?" shouted Alucard with disgust "Did I not just demonstrate to you that any shots from this gun mean nothing? I could empty it into you a dozen times and still you'd live."

"Because it fucking hurts you asshole!" Jake shouted back in confused despair. "What have I done to deserve this? Tell me!"

"Isn't it obvious? You've inherited my bloodline, perhaps the strongest in the world. How can you be worthy of such a gift, when you can't handle the most basic of its _benefits_? How can you be worthy to be the fledgling of my fledgling? And as for pain..."

He emptied the remainder of the gun into his legs, stomach, and shoulder, ignoring his agonized cries with a cocksure grin.

_"I'm not sure what it is..."_

"...you know nothing of it." Alucard grabbed Jake by the throat and pulled back his fist. Jake's eyes screwed shut, waiting for his teeth to be knocked out of his mouth

_"Maybe it's the way he seems so guarded,"_

Alucard's eyes widened "Are you flinching _again!?_" he nearly screamed in outrage.

And just like that, his rage cooled. What remained was little more than a severe disgust. He dropped Jake onto the ground and turned to leave.

_"Or that he gets so nervous whenever I talk to him about his past,"_

"What a pathetic waste. By all rights, I should kill you right now and save Seras the disappointment. But that is not within my authority at the moment. Consider yourself lucky that Seras takes such undeserved pity on you, you worthless undead pup."

_"Whatever the cause, I get this feeling that beneath all of that modesty and shyness, there's..."_

Of all those harsh words, only one burned its way through the pain in his body: "Pup." He'd been called that by someone before. Someone terrible. Someone he hated more than anyone or anything else.

Someone he wanted to kill

_"__Something else."_

Jake felt his heart pump acid into his veins, burning so hotly he screamed. Something stretched within him the farther Alucard walked away, and suddenly his heart began beating so loudly—was that even possible for a vampire?—he couldn't hear anything else. The next he knew, he was rushing toward Alucard so fast he formed tunnel vision for a moment, and, not even realizing what had happened, heard a grotesque squishing noise.

He heard Alucard chuckle darkly. "Perhaps there's a vampire in there after all."

The tunnel vision faded, and Jake found his arm was halfway through Alucard's gut, who, as he looked up, seemed more amused by it that worried. Jake's mouth dropped. He tried to say something, but nothing came out. Alucard carelessly pulled Jake's arm out of him and left, leaving him to piece together what had just happened for himself.

"I don't know what you did, fledgling," said Alucard as he walked away, "but do it more often. It was the only useful thing you've done since you came here."

A/N Well, I hope I added more flavor to this version of the scene than the old one. Truth be told, I have much bigger plans for Jake this time around, and I hope this little teaser is enough to keep you interested. PLEASE REVIEW! I feel lost when I am without reviews


	8. Welcome to Hellsing

A/N: Ok, this was a long time coming, put I hope that it was worth it. I'm putting a lot more time and effort into this version than the old one, and I hope it shows. I'd like to thank my beta reader (you know who you are) and all of you who have been so very patient with me. Enjoy the blood of the long-delayed "first mission!"

Disclaimer: I don't own Hellsing. So don't bitch, Kohta Hirano

_January 28_

_I was amazed at how calm I was as I walked out of the woods, past the puzzled soldiers, and into the sub basement. It wasn't until Seras caught me going into my room that I felt anything more than a dull resignation. She scrambled over me like a concerned mother, checking to see if my wounds had healed alright, and once she decided I wasn't going to die, demanded to know what had happened. I held out on her, but she __already knew who was behind it. I begged her not to make a scene about it, but she wouldn't have any of it. She stomped off to Alucard's room shouting his name at the top of __her lungs. __From inside my room, __I heard echoes of her shouting, and a few cocky murmurs from Alucard, but after about ten minutes, it was all over.__ I should __be __grateful that she was willing to defend me__ like that__, but__ some__how__all I f__eel is__ shame._

_I can't place it, but all of this feels very familiar to me, like a dream that you swear you'__ve had before, or a street you've walked down several times but still can't remember its name._

_What happened to me in the woods, as Alucard was leaving? It's all a blur. I didn't even see myself do it; one minute I was on the floor bleeding and shuddering in pain, the next, my hand was mingling with Alucard's guts. What door __in me __had opened and closed, so fast that __did__n't even get to see what was on the other side?__ I'm not sure I want to know._

_-------------------_

"Sir Integra," began Walter, with his practiced smooth formality. "I've completed the surveillance on Mr. Rivers you requested, as well as the report on his background prepared by your American colleague, Mr. Grayson."

Integra cut the end of her cigar and raised it to her lips. "And your results?"

"Disconcerting, and frankly, a bit baffling. I'll begin with the surveillance report: observation of the subject's behavior show no signs ulterior motives in working for the Hellsing Organization. The subject is seldom idle in the time between his Master's training; in fact, he makes a concerted effort to occupy himself as productively as possible. He rises early, goes to the shooting range, reads texts divulging Hellsing's history and research in combating undead, and when he's not doing either of those, he is journaling. It must be noted that when doing all of these things, even journaling, the subject will consistently stay within plain view of the soldiers or staff, usually in the library. The only thing he does alone, it seems, is sleep."

"No doubt a result of Alucard's little 'game' last week." Integra mused, taking her first drag of the cigarillo she'd been holding.

Immediately after Seras reported Alucard's actions, Integra confined him to his coffin for the remainder of the week, and relieved him from his responsibility of training Rivers until further notice. Preparing the fledgling was one thing, torturing and humiliating him was another. But Alucard had always had a way of 'interpreting' her orders, and that made him unpredictable, even dangerous. Her unwilling servant had to be reminded of his place at times.

"Actually, this tendency was observed even before that incident." Walter paused and furrowed a brow, as though making an important judgment. "Rather strange, in a way."

"'Strange' how?"

"Well, to put it simply, his entire life was just destroyed less than a month ago, and as far as can be gathered, he hasn't shed a tear. He behaves as though his old life never existed, and accepts his role without any apparent reservations. One may conclude however, that keeping himself busy is the only way he knows to deal with his situation. Furthermore, Rivers has not commented on the incident with Alucard, or even uttered a single word of complaint. Perhaps the report on Rivers' background would provide some insight into this."

"Go on," urged Integra with unseen interest.

"Well, first of all, River's family originally consisted of himself, his father, William, his mother, who died of a heroin overdose shortly after his birth and an older sister, Ciel. William would later die in a car crash due to intoxication, however, neither Jake nor his sister were present or even living with their father at the time."

Integra cut off her drag midway, and took the cigar out of her mouth. "Then where were they?"

"In Grandville, a farming town in northern California. It is believed that they ran away from home and William, not the model father, neglected to report them missing."

"So then, if Rivers' sister did not die in the car crash, then how _did _she meet her end?"

"This is where he begins his file with The Foundation."

Integra's eyes widened ever so slightly. "The Foundation...and what would our fellow hunters know about Rivers?"

Walter looked up from the paper. "More than he knows about himself, I'd wager."

---------------

The armored car rumbled and shook as it passed over the rough dirt road. The soldiers on board were muttering to each other about how many more kills they'd get than the other. Some shot tentative glances at Jake, and for the first time, he didn't notice.

Because, to be perfectly honest, he was just too damned _excited_.

Of all the emotions he was expecting to feel—nervousness, anxiety, fear—excitement certainly wasn't one of them. There was a strange stirring in his blood, as if it eagerly awaited what was coming. He'd memorized Integra's every word in the briefing as it were a bible passage:

_"The target is a FREAK__ chip__-__enhanced creature named Arthur __Langston. He is currently__ in Inner city London__, holed up in a block of flats called __'__Bridgewater,__'__ with a minimum estimate of four dozen ghouls. The objective is the same as always: search and destroy. If just one ghoul makes it out of that block, the infection could spread to the whole inner-city in a matter of hours__Any questions?"_

_Jake had perked up and asked what he thought was a proper question. "__What do we do if we find any survivors, Sir?"_

_Snickers erupted in the room.__ Integra silenced them with a__ dire stare and __said: "__Trust me__ Rivers, y__ou won'__t.__"_

Jake counted time by repeating the briefing over and over, clutching his large-caliber rifle in his hands like a teddy bear. He tried and failed to suppress a nervous tick in his knee. If he had a pulse, it would be all over the place.

_"Amped up?" _said Seras in his mind. She was looking at him with a mix of motherly adoration and a bit of anticipation herself.

"Yeah, I guess..." the soldiers gave him strange looks, and he realized that he'd spoken out loud. He still wasn't totally used to the whole telepathy thing, and at times he wondered just how open his mind was to Seras. Or Alucard, for that matter.

_"__Yeah__"_ he said uncertainly,_"__I can't figure out why, but I'm totally wired__."_

_"__Well, that__'s__..." _she was about to explain something, then trailed off a second, searching for the right word _"...__natural. I mean, this is your first mission and all.__"_ She didn't seem very sure of herself as she said that, and she clearly was about to say something else, but Jake let it go. She was probably more nervous about this than even he was; her good name was in his hands right now. It was just another reason that he couldn't fail.

------------

Seras looked back at her gun, asking herself if there was anything she forgot to teach him. On the surface, he seemed ready, but she knew that he was already thinking of how many ways this could go wrong. She had faith in him. It was herself that she was worried about. Something was nagging at her, something important, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't put her finger on what it was. His and her equipment was stocked and fully loaded; she made sure of that. She had trained him as best she could, and with all the reading he had been doing between sessions, he wasn't short on knowledge of his enemy. With that eager expression on his face, he probably wasn't about to hesitate either.

_What the bloody hell am I so worried about?_

She looked at Jake, sitting across from her, shoulder to shoulder with others of Hellsing's finest. It never struck her just how _young_ he was until then. With his moderate height and skinny frame, he looked incredibly small sitting next to a bunch of grizzled soldiers, like a child even. True, Seras herself didn't fit right in either, but at least she looked to be the right age.

_It's never going to change, either. _She thought grimly.

The armored car coasted to a stop and everyone started bailing out into the alleyway, and Seras stopped Jake just short of the door. He gave her a questioning look.

"Stick close, ok?"

He nodded eagerly and Seras turned to give her orders in a stern, resolute voice. "Squad A will divide into two teams: myself and Rivers will go up the fire escape into the third floor. Mick, you'll lead the rest through the main entrance. Squad B already has the other two exits covered. The vamp will either have to go up to escape you or down to escape us."

"Squeeze the bastard in between us..." said Mick, "You got it, ma'am. And kid," He said with a friendly wink, "Try to leave a few for us, eh?"

Jake gave a shy smile, they went their separate ways.

----------

Jake cycled his rifle and tried to keep his footsteps as quiet as he could, so as not to alert their quarry. With one leap, Seras cleared the first floor and landed on the fire escape as softly as a fallen leaf. She motioned for him to follow, and Jake tentatively followed, first hopping onto a closed dumpster, and landed on the fire escape so clumsily he was amazed it hadn't collapsed. If the entire complex hadn't been dead already, the ramshackle crash and creak of strained metal should have woken them all up.

So much for the element of surprise.

_"Don't worry." _Seras soothed mentally, _"This guy__'__s got only two ways out, and both are covered. Even if he takes to the streets, he'll get mowed down by Squad C."_

For the second time that night, he wondered if Seras was reading him or just knew him too well. They were ascending the steps to the third floor as quietly as they could manage, when Jake felt movement coming from the bottom. He looked down and saw two figures: a little boy and a teenaged girl. The grating made it impossible to make out details, but he could hear them speaking.

The little boy was crying as he said, "I don't wanna go back! He's gonna hurt me, I know it!"

The girl was kneeling down, with her hands on the boy's shoulders. "It's ok, Jake. He probably fell asleep in front of the TV again. He won't even hear us coming."

"But what if he does?" the boy sobbed.

"Then I'll keep you safe. I promise."

_"Jake...Jake!"_

Jake snapped his head upward to see Seras with a hurried look on her face. _"__Come on Jake, what's the matter?"_

_"__There was..." _He looked down, but the boy and girl were gone. Had he imagined it?

_"There was what?" _insisted Seras, her patience drawing thin.

Jake shook his head and mumbled a quick "never mind," and crept up the steps. He shoved aside any questions and crawled through the broken window into the bedroom.

The smell was overpowering by the time he was halfway inside. Like abstract art, blood was dashed on the whitewashed walls in jagged lines. By the stains on the window, it was clear that whoever had died here had tried to escape and failed. There was even a smattering on the bulb of an overturned lamp, still sizzling like frying bacon. His stomach turned, but to his chagrin, it wasn't in disgust. He gripped his rifle a little tighter. He had just fed less than four hours ago, why was this making him hungry?

Seras took point, kicking the door to splinters. It was just as well; stealth was moot at this point. Jake trailed closely behind, the right while Seras scanned the left. More red streaks were finger-painted down the hall; stencils of people's last horrible moments of living. But there were no bodies. At least, not yet.

Gunfire popped from two floors down. Squad A was already engaged. On cue, the doors on either side of them were smashed, and slavering groans resounded into the hallway.

Here were the true victims; the slaves, the mindless, the ghouls. Empty shells of men and women on invisible strings pulled by whatever vampire decided it would be more fun to play with their leftovers instead of letting them die with a scrape of dignity.

_What kind of monster would take pleasure in such a thing?_

He would find the answer sooner than he expected.

Jake quieted his mind and raised his rifle to toward the stairs, while Seras had his back. He aimed for the head of the first ghoul, a stocky man in plaid pajamas with half his face torn off and hanging from his cheek like a potato skin. The sight was on its head, his finger was on the trigger, the safety was off...

-----------------

The nagging feeling was coming back again, and suddenly she realized what she forgot.

_Idiot! _She screamed in her mind. _I didn't think of how to act in the field!_

It was something she never had any reason to think about until now. She was his master; Jake looked to her to see how to act as both a vampire and a soldier of Hellsing. She'd been developing the tendency to just cut loose on her enemies, but was that the example she wanted to set for her fledgling?

No, she decided. He wasn't ready for that just yet, and bloodlust was something that had to be kept in check if he was going to work with human soldiers. Besides, it didn't seem in his nature to gravitate toward that sort of thing. At least, she didn't think so.

Control, that's what she would teach. Learning to harness bloodlust would come much later, when he was more used to his vampiric nature.

--------------------

Jake cursed himself inwardly. Seras had already fired three shots, all kills. This was the moment he'd been waiting for, his big chance, and now he was hesitating and this bloated corpse was lumbering closer to him by the second

_Just pull the trigger! _he screamed at himself, _Pull the god damn—_

And just like that, the muzzle flashed. He wasn't even sure he meant for it to happen, but it did. The fat ghoul's head from the jaw up was completely gone. It dropped to the floor in a heap, causing another skinnier one behind it to trip. It was so easy...but why should that surprise him?

"Nice shot, keep it up!" called Seras.

"Uh, right!" he called back.

Another shot on the one that tripped, no resistance this time. Its brains flew in all directions, adding fresh stains on the wall; some even catching in his uniform. Another blew through midsection of some suit, cutting him in half. He finished that one off with a blast to the heart. Every time he pulled the trigger and saw another ghoul fall to pieces, he felt an unusual swelling in his chest; an exhilaration unlike any he had before. The shows he used to do with his friends were nothing compared to this: his instrument was his gun, the only audience he had were those who fell before him, their applause came in the sounds of their bones shattering and flesh tearing. His blood boiled with anticipation as more ghouls appeared shambling up the stairs, doubtless driven there by Squad B. A crash of broken glass came from behind Jake as he aimed for the heart of another festering meat-puppet.

"He's flown the coup!" shouted Seras, "Can you hold your own here?"

"I'll be fine!" he shouted without turning back; perhaps a little more than fine.

He heard Seras dash for the window at the end of the hallway, and Jake went back to work. He was in the middle of switching magazines when one ghoul tried to creep up behind him, and he decided it was time to give the rifle a break. He brought a foot down on the creature's knee, snapping it backwards with a sound that reminded him of popcorn kernels in fast forward. It groaned coarsely and collapsed, its head right inside the doorway. Jake suddenly got an idea. He grabbed the door and slammed it on the ghouls head, smashing it between the door and the frame. The first time didn't make it stop wriggling, so he did it again. The door shattered on the third slam as the ghoul's head finally gave completely, revealing another ghoul. Jake brought the butt of his weapon against its chin. It fell backward into a dresser laden with pictures and a large mirror on top. Jake loaded in the last magazine and shoved the barrel of the rifle into the ghoul's mouth, smashing through its teeth, and pulled the trigger. The contents of its head splashed onto the mirror, and in it, Jake could make out a pair of beaming red eyes and razor-thin smile.

_Alucard?_

The blood ran down the mirror a little more, and Jake realized it wasn't Alucard he was looking at. It was himself.

He looked down at the bloodstained, broken pictures: two redheaded girls that must have been the daughters or nieces of this degraded husk of a man that lay headless before him. The question he asked himself before echoed in his mind again.

_What kind of monster would take pleasure in such a thing?_

The rifle fell from his hands. His skull suddenly felt as if someone had parked a garbage truck on it. An incoherent scream resounded in his head, a girl's voice, but he couldn't hear what it was saying. Images flashed in front of his eyes: a bloodstained bed, a tunnel with the light closing, and a shadow standing in a doorway. That horrible feeling from that night in the woods returned, his heart began that impossible beat again, the hot lead surging through his veins. He felt like he was dangling on the edge of a bottomless pit.

And then he felt a hand on his shoulder. His heart stopped its agonizing pulsing, his head quieted, his needless breathing returned to normal.

"Are you ok?" said Seras.

"Yeah," he said slowly, "I'm fine."

-------------------


	9. Scratching the Surface

A/N Whew! This is by far the longest chapter yet, but it's also the most important one yet. I put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears (mostly blood) into this chapter, so if I don't get some reviews, I can only assume that the work is not worth continuing. So please, I beseech you, read and review!

_Febru__ary 2_

_I've returned from my mission. It was a complete success. Everyone was pleased with me; Seras, Mick, even Integra gave an approving nod. "Welcome to Hellsing,"__ they all said. I should be proud of myself: I did my job, and without Seras' help at that. Everyone's happy. Or at least not annoyed. I've just took the fir__st step toward acceptance here._

_But I'm not proud. I'm scared. Scared like a kid tied to a chair __in a stranger's basement__ More scared than I can ever remember being.__ When I think of yesterday, I don't think "job well done," oh no. All I think of__ are__ those two strawberry blonde girls I saw in those pictures. I think of their faces contorted in sorrow and confusion __when __their father's death is read off to them from a fake autopsy report__. I think of the scars they'll have to carry__ for the rest of their lives. But mostly, I think of their eyes,__ staring at me as I destroyed what was left__ of__ their father, __and smiled. I actually _smiled. _How did I lose control so easily? And __why does it feel so familiar?_

"Has anyone ever told you that you think entirely too much?"

Jake dropped his pen, sprang up, and whirled around. "Jesus!"

Alucard stood there, his default expression beaming with delight at the momentary terror he had caused him. It was likely he'd been looking over his shoulder the whole time.

"I thought you were supposed to be in your coffin!"

"I was, until five minutes ago."

A cold feeling crept in Jake's stomach. Alucard probably didn't appreciate being locked in a coffin for a week, even if it was his own actions that led to it. Just as Jake was imagining the many gruesome, horrible ways that Alucard could exact his vengeance, he asked a question as gentle as a mortician's scalpel.

"Did you have fun?"

Jake opened his mouth to say something. Nothing came out.

Alucard's eyes narrowed. "I don't like repeating myself."

Jake broke his trance and turned away. "O-of course not!" he shouted irritably. "What kind of question is that, anyway?" He pretended to go back to his work, hoping Alucard would take the hint. He should have known better.

"I don't think you're being entirely honest with me, fledgling." there was an edge to his voice that made Jake set the pen down and turn back around. "Then again, I suppose hiding—or should I say, hiding _from_—the truth is something you must have become quite versed in by now."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"If you wanted to know that, you wouldn't have had to ask me." He stated simply.

Jake hated it when Alucard talked in riddles like this. There was a trap door in every sentence and spikes waiting at the bottom of every pit. It was best to indulge him, lest he take a more brutal approach, even though they were in the library with camera's trained on them. But Jake really didn't like where he was going.

"What do you want, Alucard?"

Alucard's voice and expression did not change. "I want you to answer my question before I decide to extract the answer through less pleasant means."

"I already told you, no." Jake insisted, "I did my job, that's it."

"Then tell me," he began, with that serrated but polished tone of his, "What is it that you're so 'afraid' of? Is it, perhaps, that you've finally gotten a taste of what it's like to be a monster, and have found it to your liking?"

Jake felt as if Alucard had thrown a lit match into his gas tank. The table he sat at shattered as Jake brought his fists down upon it outrage.

"I am _NOT_ a monster!"

He shouted in a voice he didn't even recognize; it was a mixture of a hiss and a growl. His heart was thrashing in his chest, as if it might leap out and attack the smug vampire in front of him.

Alucard's eyes beamed with interest. A low chuckle stirred in his chest. "If only you could see what I see right now..." he said, "It stirs in its sleep. Did your Master put it there, or did she merely give it claws?"

Jake's rage froze as though doused with liquid nitrogen. He looked at the table, hastily grabbed his notebook from the wreckage, and without saying another word, left in a near-run.

Alucard called out to him. "I just wanted say, 'welcome to the first night of the rest of your unlife'!"

Jake slammed the door to the library shut and headed for the subbasement.

-----------------------------------

Seras stood at attention in front of her commander, still unsure of why she was called here. Walter's face held an acute sense of concern when he called her up for this meeting.

"Ms. Victoria, Sir Integra wishes to see you in her office."

He'd said in the same composed, poised way he said everything, but what disturbed her was that she just barely noticed him cutting a cautious glance at Jake, as though he was looking at a strange dog chained to a post.

"Seras..." began Integra. She was calling her by her first name. Integra never did that. Just what the hell was going on?

"We've received some new information regarding your fledgling's background. Information that you, as his Master, need to know, and we, as an organization, need to act upon."

"What kind of information?" she asked cautiously.

Integra picked up a large manila envelope and gave it to Walter, who in turn gave it to Seras. She took it cautiously, eyeing it with some confusion.

"What is this?"

"It's your fledgling's Pandora's box," said Integra, putting out her cigarillo, "within it are files detailing his basic background, psychological profile, and, most importantly, his file with the Foundation."

"The Foundation?" Seras was well aware of the Foundation; America's elite vampire hunters; rated beside the Vatican not for their volume of kills but for their efficiency. But why on earth would it take notice of Jake?

"It seems he has had prior experience with vampires. He was present during a vampire attack on the town of Grandville, California 8 years ago."

"I don't understand," Seras face twisted in confusion, beginning to open the packet. "Why wouldn't he tell us something so important?"

"It's all in those files, Seras. What you choose to do with them is your choice entirely. However, a concession must be made in the risk we are taking by allowing him to stay here."

"Risk?" she spat, almost offended.

"You must never let him out of your sight. If he behaves in any way you consider strange, I wish to know about it immediately. You have your orders, and your information. You are dismissed."

"But I—"

"You are dismissed." Integra said, lacking the usual sternness.

Seras gave a resigned salute and left the room so confused that if not for the creeping dread spreading from her stomach, she would have demanded more answers. She looked again at the envelope, Jake's "Pandora's Box," and hurried down to her room.

--------------

The contents of the envelope were strewn across the wooden table where Seras sat. She'd been staring at them for at least a half an hour by now: a large file stamped **CLASSIFIED** and three videotapes entitled "Sessions" A,B and C.

Neither looked inviting, to say the least. Anytime she touched the file, her hand would draw away suddenly, as if some part of it might snatch her away. "Pandora's Box," that's what Integra had called it. Did she even have to open them?

_Of course, _she scolded herself, _Jake's your fledgling, and you're responsible for him. If whatever's in here has spooked Integra into putting him under a microscope, then it's too important to just ignore, and damn it, you're a vampire. Information isn't on your list of things to fear._

Seras swallowed hard, and opened the folder

_Foundation Case File #1489-S_

_Name: Jacob Rivers_

_Age: 9 years (as of 1997)_

_Birthdate: 1/18/1989_

_Family history: Born__ to Wi__lliam and Margaret Rivers, eight__ years after his Sister, Ciel. __Genetics predisposed to alcoholism, as shown by a cursory examination of either side of the family. No known mental disorders on either side._

_Environment: Lived in a slum of Los Angeles in an apartment complex. Gang violen__ce was commonplace in this ar__ea. School and work conditions deplorable._

_Medical History__: Margaret Rivers abused heroine __during her pregnancy, and so Jacob__ was born prematurely. This accounts for his physical frailty in early development, which is still marginally noticeable by h__is low wei__ght and __light __frame. From age five to age nine__, he is recorded to have been admitted to the l__ocal hospital thirty-__three__ times, only __four __of which were due to illnesses. The others were all due to physical injuries listed as "accidents__"__ most of which were, among o__ther things, broken bones (for details, see "Medical Records")._

Seras skimmed through a few of them; broken cheekbones, arms, even a leg at one point. Two dislocated shoulders (at different times), bruised ribs and three broken fingers. These couldn't have been accidents, they were just too numerous. Did he get into fights a lot in school? No, the injuries were too great to have been sustained so superficially. The scars on his fingers still had not been accounted for.

_Early E__xperience__Margaret died of __a __heroine overdose one year after giving birth to Jacob, so William raised __him and his sister__ alone. He was a known child abuser in the __neighborhood, but due to his__ connections__ in the police department, no one __would report him__. It __has been estimated__ that out of the thirty-three hospital stays Jacob has on record, William is directly responsible for __at least __twenty-four of them._

Seras nearly leapt out of her chair. Twenty-four times this bastard had hospitalized him? No wonder he took Alucard's abuse with such total resignation; being downtrodden was probably second nature to him. She would see to it that Alucard never laid another finger on him again. She calmed herself and continued reading.

_On __February 17, 1995, both he and his sister ran from home. Their father never reported them missing, and would a year later die in a car crash while intoxicated.__ Ceil__, seventeen at the time,__ drove Jacob to Grandville, __a__ farming town a few miles out of the San Die__go city limits, where they found room and board with the Graysons, an elderly couple owning a cattle ranch.__There they__ lived there __for roughly ten months. They would work for the Graysons in exchange for their stay, and reportedly __were treated much like their own grandchildren._

A photo was provided on the next page. A young Jake with jet black hair, stood in a field of grass, under a cloudless sky. A young girl with equally dark hair and soft, blue eyes kneeled behind him, holding onto him with her face gently smiling right beside his own. There was no doubt in Seras' mind; this was Ceil, the one who had saved him from that monstrous father of theirs. They looked so happy together, it was like a postcard sent from heaven.

Seras suddenly grew nauseous as she turned the page, and found what looked like a field report.

_CASE NO__ 82944_

_7/28/97_

_Mission: Search and Destroy_

_Overview: Received information off__ from local cells indicating an __infestation of 1-3 nosferatu__ in Wine County, CA__. Local __reports pinpointed activity at 1606 Watermill Rd__, home of __Ethel and Roger Grayson__. Agents Royce, __Carson, __Rodriguez dispatched. Confirmed__ N__osferatu__ presence, __but __no subjects. Two ghouls were__ present and dispatched without __casualties. Confirmed to __be residential owners. Further __investigation did not yield t__he sire. Additional fatality by __decapitation confirmed__, identified as Ceil Rivers__, age 17._

He had seen her die. It wasn't just a possibility, Seras was certain of it. Jake had watched as his sister was decapitated.

_One survivor, fo__und to be Jake River__s__, age 9__, formerly living with William Rivers (DEC.)__. Survivor __was found to be un__tainted__ with severe__ abrasions to all digits on the hands, including __some bone dama__ge._

An image flashed in Seras' mind: Jake's child self, trembling in fear and agony, the tips of his fingers scraped to the bone with bits of flesh and skin curling back, the fingernails broken and jagged. She blinked it away and read on.

_Agents Royce and Rodrigue__z __dispatched to Los Angeles for __further investigations of sire.__Suspicions confirmed of larger Nosferatu__ ring in the area.__Survivor __sent to Deep Ground for recovery and debriefing._

Deep Ground. The United Nations-sanctioned secret facility for re-integrating witnesses of vampire attacks, and imprisoning those too stubborn or too damaged to keep their mouths shut. Seras herself had only heard of this place recently, after a vampire attack in Yorkshire, one of the few instances where she had ever known anyone to survive. She had asked Sir Integra what happened to the surviving family. Integra had said that if they were too disturbed to be sworn to secrecy, then they would likely be sent to the secret facility. Not even _she_ knew for sure what happened after that, but it sufficed to say that most of those who go in don't come out. At least, not as they once were.

The report ended there, but the file wasn't even half finished. So far, Seras knew her fledgling had a terrible childhood and had his life destroyed by vampires not once, but _twice_. But inside she knew this wasn't the worst of it, not by a longshot. But she had no excuse not to finish what she started. For Jake's sake, she had to see this through.

Seras ignored the knot in her throat and turned the page.

_Preliminary Evaluation__ (Jan 1, 1997)__ done by Dr. Ralph Harding, PhD_

_Patient shows symptoms of sever__e Post Traumatic Shock. He will not speak to or even acknowledge the presence of anyone who approaches him. He will not eat or drink anything, even if left alone in the room. A feeding tube will be applied if this does not change in 24 hours time.__ When and if he begins to show signs of communication, therapy can begin._

_Jan 3_

_The patient is beginning to deteriorate due to malnutrition. A feeding tube has been applied, with no resistance from the patient. Still no communication or even acknowledgment attempted._

_Jan __29_

_The __patient has broken from his shock. He forcibly removed the feeding tube, creating minor lacerations in his esophagus, and repeatedly screamed "__Cei__l" over and over. When help was sent in to calm him, I followed. The moment he saw us, he accused us being "monsters," and attempted to attack us __with __his IV stand. __It took a remarkable__ amount of effort to subdue him;__ both __orderlies__ had to hold him down__, and even then__ he thrashed about enough to match the strongest patient here. __It took time and patience, but__ I was able to convince him that we were not going to harm him. He calmed himself and after a time, we left__ him to himself. Our first session will begin tomorrow morning (see "Sessions")._

Seras took a cautious glance at the tapes that were on the table. She didn't have a VCR, or even a TV in her room, but the screening room was upstairs. It was probably unlocked, and it was 1:00am, so she probably wouldn't be interrupted.

The walk to the screening room was longer than it should have been. The flight of stairs in the subbasement was too tall, the hallways too narrow, the lights too dim. Even the paintings seemed to stare at her in pity. It was as if the entire mansion, though empty, dark, and quiet, was warning her against what she was about to do. Seras felt the impulse to lock the tapes in the unused drawer in her desk and forget they were there, to throw them in a dumpster on garbage day, or to burn them in her trash basket downstairs. But she didn't. She just swallowed hard and kept walking, telling herself that this was for Jake's sake.

Seras walked cautiously into the screening room and shut the door behind her, locking it to make sure that no one would walk in. She turned on the VCR and projection screen, turned the lights off, and took out the first tape, "Session 1-5." Slower than was necessary, she slid it into the VCR, heard its mechanical buzz and click, and sat down at the end of the table.

A static screen, then a white one.

**Patient No. 1489-S**

**Jacob Rivers**

**Session 1**

The camera cut to an angle that showed a pale, withered child, sitting at the end of a steel table. His eyes were watery and sunken in, with black circles around them, utterly lost in his own suffering. His hair was shaggy and had begun to form a white streak on the left side. Cheekbones protruded unnaturally from his face. His hands rested limply on the table, with bandages still around his fingertips.

"Jacob," said a soft voice from off-screen. "My name is Dr. Harding. There's no need for you to be afraid anymore; no one here is going to hurt you. There are no monsters here, Jacob. Only us, and we're here to help you. You are safe here. Do you understand?"

Little Jake said nothing for almost ten minutes. The doctor was patient, and took his time. When he spoke, it was barely above a whisper.

"You're wrong."

"About what?" asked the doctor curiously.

"There is..." he began, staring at the steel table, as though looking into it. "...a monster."

The fingers on his right hand twitched suddenly, and began to scratch weakly at the table weakly at regular intervals, like some sort of outside heartbeat.

The doctor tried to ask him what he meant, but Jake had already hit the off switch. After about twenty minutes of no response, he ended the session. The camera cut to fuzz again, then into the next session.

Jake was unresponsive for the next two sessions. The white streak in his hair had expanded considerably, though his face was a little fuller, and the circles around his eyes had begun to fade. Seras guessed it was probably due to intravenous feeding and sedative-induced sleep. By the fourth, the bandages on his fingers were reduced to a single layer, exposing his still partially broken fingernails.

"I hear you had a nightmare last night, Jacob."

Jake responded by beginning to scratch against the table again. His fingernails made a much more distinct noise, a repetitive _scritch _that would have driven a less patient man up the wall.

"Was it about the monsters again?"

He kept scratching.

"Was it about Ceil?"

The scratching stopped. Jake's eyes widened, his hands balling into trembling fists. He hunched over the table, as though about to vomit. Then he relaxed, easing back into his seat and unclenching his fists. His head tilted down, the shadow of his hair making it impossible to see his expression.

"A pen." He said simply. It was a quiet voice, but Seras heard a barely perceptible edge to it.

"What was that?" asked the doctor, not fully understanding.

"I need a pen."

The doctor's hand appeared onscreen as he handed the boy the pen. Jake's other hand went to the doctor's wrist, however, stopping him from retracting. He studied it for a moment, as though looking for something.

Seras felt a knot form in her stomach.

Jake pulled it a little closer, and the doctor allowed it, his left shoulder now visible. Jake's head tilted back toward the doctor's face, the light shining on it for just a moment. And there was nothing but contempt in it, as she saw the little boy raise the pen high into the air, and bring it down on the doctor's hand. He screamed and tried to yank his hand away, but Jake had it pinned to the table, and dragged it back by the wound until his face was an inch from the doctor's. His other hand went to the doctor's throat as he rasped a serrated, hissing voice:

"_NEVER_ use her _nam__e._"

Then, just as quickly as it came, the all-consuming hatred written on the child's face disappeared as he let go of the doctor, letting him stumble back off-screen, gasping for air. He looked at the bloodied pen in his hand with a mixture of confusion and horror.

"No," he whimpered, dropping the pen, holding his head in his hands "NO! I didn't...That didn't happen! I never wanted to..."

He was cut off by two burly orderlies dragging him out of the room. The screen went to static.

Seras watched hypnotically as the tape unceremoniously cut to the next session, unsure of what she had just witnessed. There was Jake again, his hair almost fully white now, trembling in fear and shame. Tears formed in his eyes as he sobbed:

"I'm so s-s-sorry doctor...I tried s-so hard to stop it, but it's stronger than me."

"What is, Jacob?" To Seras' amazement, it was the same voice. Even after what he'd done, Dr. Harding still hadn't given up.

Jake slammed his hands on the table in frustration, half-screaming; "The _MONSTER_!"

He cried and cried until his eyes were puffy and red. "Ceil...she always made it go away...she would always protect me. She promised...she _promised__"_

The doctor said nothing for a long while, perhaps waiting for Jake to calm, or because he didn't know how to react to such a statement. The boy's sobs simmered down to uneven breaths and fearful trembling, and the doctor spoke.

"Jacob, I'm not saying what you did was right. But you've lost so much, and witnessed a terrible thing that only few people have and lived; feeling scared or angry is natural. Right now you just don't know how to handle what you've gone through. That's why I'm here, to guide you through it. But you have to help me help you."

"You don't understand!" he shouted, holding his head, elbows on the table. "Ceil's gone! Nothing can stop it now!"

"Then the monster you've been having nightmares about...the monster you're speaking of...isn't the one that took your sister from you?"

"No..." he said, "it's...in me."

Jake would say nothing more on the matter. "Lock me up," he kept saying, "I don't want to hurt anyone, so just lock me up." Then he went quiet, and began that unnerving scratching again, which signaled that he was dead to the world until further notice.

Before she could convince herself otherwise, she quickly grabbed the second tape and stuffed it in the VCR, forgetting that there was one already in it. She cursed, replaced the tape and hastily sat back down.

"You're ready to talk now, is that right, Jacob?"

He hesitated a moment. "Yes."

"Alright, why don't you start by telling me when the 'monster' first showed up?"

"Are the guards outside the door?" he asked.

The doctor paused a moment, then answered evenly. "Yes. They are waiting. If something should happen, we will be ready."

Jake drew a shaky breath and began. "It happened over a year ago. Every time I would walk to school in the morning, I had to pass this dog. It was kept on a long chain, so if it heard me coming, it would always chase me halfway down the alley. This time, it almost got me. It caught the back of my ankle. Just another inch and it could've torn my heel off. "

"And?"

"I kept staring at the dog. I was out reach, but it was still thrashing against the chain; and I thought: it wants to kill me. Every morning it tried to, and every morning I just ran from it and gave it another chance the next day."

He swallowed hard, and continued. "My heart started burning. I couldn't hear anything anymore; except the sound of my own heart beating so loud my ears hurt. All I saw was red. The world seemed to slow down, and all I could think about was how much I hated that stupid dog, how sick I was of running away from it every single day."

"So what did you do?"

"I...I picked up a piece of rebar that was on the ground, and I...hit it. It fell over and started twitching..." his jaw began to tremble, "and I hit it again. I smashed its head until I couldn't even recognize it anymore. I wanted to stop, but I couldn't...it was like...I wasn't..." he choked, tears beginning to well in his eyes. His breathing became ragged, "It was like I wasn't _me_ anymore."

"And what happened next?"

"Everything went back to normal again...it was like waking up from a bad dream, only it wasn't. I was so bloody I had throw my jacket in the dumpster. I ran away and didn't look back."

There was a long pause before anything was said. Jake's eyes darted from the table to the doctor, doubtless wondering how utterly hopeless he sounded.

"Jacob, I don't think you're telling me the full story."

Jake blinked. "W-what?"

"You are not a monster, Jacob. You have a _conscience _and it's strong as the best of us; that's why you're in so much pain right now. But something is overriding it, drowning it out, and I just can't imagine that this dog was the only source of it. Did something happen before that morning?"

The VCR fizzled and the screen went to static. Seras tapped against it, trying to get to work, but to no avail. She cursed hastily and ejected the tape. She had gripped it a bit too tightly before she put it in, apparently, as one of the plastic white wheels underneath was damaged slightly.

"Shit!"

Seras stared despondently at the last tape. Her eyes darted to the clock on the VCR—which, amazingly enough was set correctly—and saw that it was 7:00am. She'd been watching these tapes for seven hours straight. But she knew that if she took a break now, she may never work up the nerve to finish these. She took the last tape in hand, feeling her palms sweat for the first time in years, and slid it into the VCR.

----------------------

A/N: HAHA! Beware the cliffhangers of doom! Review and I might feel inclined to continue...and remember, I love details.


	10. Endless Dream

A/N This chapter is dedicated to my beta-readers IvIeadhros and Master of Teh Boot, without whom this fic would not be anywhere near as good as it is. Read and Review like always. They are the lifeblood by which I sustain myself, as IvIeadhros likes to say.

Belated Disclaimer: I don't own Hellsing, so don't bitch, Kohta Hirano.

**Chapter 10: Endless Dream**

Integra Hellsing sat at her desk, her jaw tight from the artillery barrage aimed at her head. The over-the-counter medication Walter had been giving her hadn't helped much, and she wasn't about to waste precious time in the sickbay when there were more important matters to attend to. Besides, the notion of breaking her "if you're still breathing, you don't need a doctor" rule was far from appealing.

Her mind went back to the first night Rivers arrived in her office. He'd put on the most obviously false display of confidence she'd ever seen, in an attempt to prove that he wasn't utterly useless. Even then she thought there was something strange about him, something so obscure his very presence unnerved her. Alucard's presence wasn't exactly comforting, either, but at least his nature was obvious. Rivers, however, was a different story altogether. He seemed conscionable to say the least, but with what she knew about him since Dr. Harding's call...there was no way of knowing what was really going on behind those earnest eyes. He was, in essence, a wild card; a powder keg waiting for a spark.

"Doesn't that make it all the more interesting?"

If her head hadn't already been pounding, Integra might have felt the familiar, cold tingle and braced herself. But for once, he caught her by surprise. She made no move to show it, however, and tilted her head up slowly to meet his lustful stare, masking her surprise with a look of annoyance.

"And just what is so 'interesting' about having damaged goods living in my home and fighting alongside my men?" she said coldly.

Alucard looked slyly at her. "Damaged goods? Is that how you see him?"

"His mental issues are nothing more than a dangerous liability. Were it not for Seras' ability to keep him under control, I would have shipped him back to the Foundation the moment Dr. Harding called me."

A sudden gleam went over Alucard's eyes. His smile broadened. Integra knew this look all too well.

He had an idea.

"What if I were to turn this 'liability' of yours into an asset?"

Integra raised an eyebrow in skepticism. "What are you talking about?"

"Master, I disagree when you say that he is 'damaged goods.' In fact, I would even say that we were lucky to find him. He's a gem; he just needs to be washed clean and cut in the appropriate shape."

"This is coming from the one who called him 'utterly spineless?'"

Alucard ignored her lack of enthusiasm and went on. "He is, at the moment. But I can change all that. I can melt his hesitation, burn his regret to ashes, carve away his weakness and leave behind a perfect soldier of Hellsing, an engine of destruction second only to myself."

"In other words, you could turn him into a monster?" She said tonelessly, showing that she was listening but not remotely interested.

"No, only he can do that. But I _can_ awaken the monster that sleeps in him. You know it will awake eventually; why not harness its power, just as you have harnessed mine? Give me a month, no, half that, and it will be done."

Integra paused for a moment, as though considering it. "Alucard, I'll allow it..." she began, shielding her thoughts and letting his excitement build, "...when Rivers waltzes into your quarters and asks you himself. You must think me utterly mad. Do you think for an instant that I would snatch him away from his master, throw him squarely in your hands, and leave you to do whatever you wish with him? I would just as soon put him in front of firing squad on a hot July morning. And as for your perverse interest in him, I suggest you end it. You had your chance with Seras, and by some miracle, she came out of it still decent and speaking in full sentences. Rivers belongs to her, not you."

A miracle indeed: once she became Nosferatu, Alucard subjected her to training rites that would turn the stomach of a Viet Cong torturer. Integra herself had been overly occupied at the time to see it, but each night she seemed to slip away more and more, until she finally spoke up about the things Alucard had been doing to her. Alucard was kept at an arm's distance from her ever since, and no one ever spoke of it.

Alucard's face betrayed no disappointment, but his smile shrank back to its normal width. "It really is a shame to waste such great potential. Not even in the Crusades have I seen hatred so concentrated and pure. If you don't make it work _for_ you, in time it is sure to work against you."

"I will not repeat myself, Alucard."

Alucard turned smoothly toward the wall. More specifically, through her father's portrait, which he always did in spite of her.

"My patience is eternal, Master. I have faith that you, and he, will see things my way."

-------------------------------------

The projection screen fizzed to life and showed something Seras had never seen, or wanted to see again.

Jake was in a steel chair, panting, tied down by the wrists and the forehead with leather restraints. He writhed and thrashed against them, jerking the entire chair an inch or so where the bolts that held it down were loose. His eyes were wide and fiery, his teeth bared, his hands clenching and easing in time with his sporadic movements.

"Jacob, listen to me; what happened to your sister, in either case, it was _not_ _your fault_."

"Bullshit!" he screamed back, in that horrible serrated voice that Seras hated more than anything else. "She suffered and she died because of _me! _She even let that piece of shit..."

He didn't finish his sentence, he just screamed with a set of thrashes so forceful the bolts seemed to give a little.

"Monsters..." he growled, as though gagging on glass and hot asphalt. "Monsters...everywhere...the world is crawling with them!"

Jake's pale face was a mask of such consummate, primal rage, that Seras swore for a moment that a demon was trying to eat its way out of him.

"I'll kill them." he said quietly, as if it were an oath. "I'll kill them all. Kill them all. Kill them all kill them all kill them all killthemallkillthemallkillthemall..." He chanted it over and over like a prayer to some dark god, getting louder as the _thing_ that had replaced the gentle boy she knew grew stronger and stronger.

_"Or," _Seras thought in terror, _"What if the gentle boy is __just __a replacement for the monster?"_

Jake's chanting degenerated into more animalistic thrashing and wordless screams. He must have paralyzed the entire room in fear, as no move was made to sedate or calm him. Seras could hear the leather straps straining against his little wrists, and it seemed as though he might actually break out of them when he finally wore himself down. His breathing became sporadic, his eyes scrunched. His chest quivered as he gulped in air at irregular rhythms. In a moment, it came to Seras what was happening: he was crying. Tears still streaming down his face, the sobbing stopped, and he spoke in a voice so calm it unsettled her more than the raving he had done before.

"I'll never get rid of it, Dr. Harding," he said lifelessly, even less human than his demonic growls, "It's always gonna be there, looking over my shoulder."

Jake smiled through the tears, but it wasn't the smile of a child. It was the smile reserved when one sees their death approaching, and welcomes it with open arms. Seras knew instinctively that this was his way of thanking the good doctor for all his efforts, even though they proved useless.

"I think," he said, with a single, desolate laugh, "we're done for the day."

Seras' jaw trembled and her vision began to grow red. Her chest shuddered, and she heard the sound of little droplets hitting the table. She wanted to reach through the screen, to hold him, to tell him that she'd never give up on him, and that she'd protect him from the Monster forever. But all she could do was watch, as the tape faded to black, as the though drawing a curtain at the end of the last bloody act of Jake's tragic, tortured past.

But then the tap cut loudly to a scene of Jake in a bare, off-white cell. He was laying in a cot, as though asleep, with several masked orderlies scurrying about him, frantically strapping medical instruments to him. Seras saw that his eyes were barely slit open.

"What happened?" barked one of the orderlies onscreen.

"I-I don't know!" pleaded Dr. Harding helplessly from offscreen. "We were taking him back to his cell and he collapsed!"

Seras didn't know if any of the doctors noticed, but his slit-open eyes closed completely, as though he had only just now lost consciousness.

"Dr., he's flatlined!" cried one of the nurses frantically.

"Jesus...perform CPR, hurry!"

Had he done this to himself? Was he so afraid of becoming the puppet of a Monster that he'd actually forced himself to die?

The nurse was on her second attempt at CPR when the camera cut to black again.

Seras saw Jake again, but he was not raving, sobbing or apologizing rampantly, or even staring straight ahead in unspoken horror. Nor did he show any signs of physical illness or even exhaustion. In fact, the most Seras could make of his expression was mild nervousness and a bit of uncertainty, like a kid called up to the principle's office.

"You're heart didn't function for over five minutes. We had to shock it back to life or you might have died."

Jake didn't speak, just wrinkled his nose in confusion. Then a look of understanding came across his face and he returned to his former expression.

"Jacob, this 'monster' of yours...if you truly wish to conquer it, you must first accept that it is a part of you. You can't treat it as if it's some kind of disease you need a cure for. It's something that you need to sort out, not get rid of. And I still have faith in you."

Jake blinked, not understanding any of what the good doctor had just said. Finally, he spoke, and Seras suddenly understood everything.

"I'm sorry but...what are you talking about?"

There was an awkward pause, but Jake looked on, waiting patiently for an answer.

"Do you know who I am, Jacob?" asked the doctor worriedly.

"Yes, you're my doctor. You've been helping me since the car crash."

"Car crash?"

"Yes," said Jake, as thought it were a well-known fact. "My Dad and Sister died four months ago. It...made me very mad for some reason, and you've been helping me get better so I can leave here. I think I'm starting to be ok, now. When do you think I'll be able to leave?"

The hellish nightmares he'd endured, past and present, his near-psychotic rage; it had all just disappeared as if it was never there. Then Seras understood just what he had done in the session before: he forgot everything. Replaced it with nothing more than cheap facades he had created to shield himself from the horrors wrought upon him.

The next three hours went by in a grayish brown sludge. All the sessions afterward were more of the same: the doctor would try to tell him what truly happened, and Jake would calmly disagree. "That's silly," he'd say, "Everyone knows monsters don't exist." And he'd truly believe it, beyond any doubt whatsoever. He was even hooked up to a polygraph, and his pulse didn't jump in the slightest when Dr. Harding gravely went over the incident, or even said Ceil's name.

"What was Ceil like, Jacob?" he'd asked him, hoping to conjure a response; anything except the pretty lies he kept vomiting up.

Jake just smiled warmly, the same way he did to Seras that first night in the gym.

"She was an angel; a perfect person." He dreamily replied.

The tape ended and Seras stared at static for what had to have been hours. She cradled her head in her hands as her brain feebly tried to process what she'd seen. She tried to tell herself that none of this mattered; that Jake was fine the way he was. After all, if the "monster" was going to show up, wouldn't it have done so already? No, that wasn't the Jake she knew. Jake wasn't vengeful. Jake wasn't bitter or angry. In fact, he could do with a bit more assertiveness.

But what really loomed over her was that horrible question: what was she going to do about it?

Her conscience demanded that she tell him everything. He had the right to know; for God's sake, she was holding his entire life in her hands. Sure it had been Hell for him, sure she didn't know what the consequences would be, but it was the right thing to do.

Another part of her, however, questioned her sanity in doing so. What would happen when the façade Jake created was smashed to pieces, the vault finally cracked open? Would he change? Break inside? Or would the "Monster" he had tried so hard to cage run free again, now endowed with power beyond his wildest dreams? Surely it would be more merciful to just let him live the way he was, where he wasn't suffering endlessly; to let the sleeping dog lie.

Besides, he wouldn't have gone to such extreme lengths if he was able to handle it, even now. Even the polygraph tests the doctor ran showed no signs of recollection; he might have buried his past so deeply that it was beyond recovery.

Then Seras remembered that night in the gym, the way his voice wavered when he talked about his family, how uncomfortable he seemed with the subject. Was it because his memories weren't as well hidden as before?

_You can'__t take the easy way out,_ she told herself,_ Jake's life and sanity are at stake here, you can't just sit on __your__ hands and pretend everything's ok. You made a promise that you'd take care of him, so damn it, __work up the guts and live up to your word._

Seras swallowed hard and glanced at the clock on the VCR.

_6:00PM_

Jake was probably just waking up. A plan was forming in her head as she opened the door and took the longest walk she could ever remember taking to the subbasement. She would take him to her room, sit him down, and, very calmly—"

"Seras, you're up?"

She nearly leapt out of her skin and fell down the few steps that remained.

"Sorry," said Jake, looking just as modestly chipper as he always did in her presence. "I thought you'd hear me coming like always. You're probably still half-asleep, huh?"

Seras was speechless for a moment. She had worked up all her nerve to come down here and now, here she was, her fledgling staring straight at her, with that naïve, warm smile and those trusting eyes, pinning her to the wall like a butterfly. Her voice caught in her throat, her mouth opened and closed, trying to get some audible sound out. Jake's expression turned to worry.

"Are you ok, Seras?" he said, his sincere concern only making things harder for her. "You look really pale, are you sick or something?"

"Jake..." this was her chance. She had to take it. It was now or never.

"Yeah?" he looked at her, his attention undivided, just as always.

_"__I'll kill them all__"_

_"__It's always gonna' be there, looking over my shoulder."_

"I'm fine. Just didn't get much sleep," she said, with a fake, reassuring smile that made her hate herself immeasurably. "Go ahead to the gym. I'll meet you there in a bit, ok?"

Jake's worried grimace faded to a smile again. "Ok, Seras. You better be on your guard though, I've been practicing a lot."

Seras watched him turn to leave with a noticeable spring in his step, while Seras mentally bashed her head into the wall for her cowardice.

"Look at him," said a voice from behind her. "Like a child: fast asleep and dreaming. Do you want to wake him up, or should I?"

Seras gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. Possessed by what she could only think of as a maternal rage, she whipped around and brought a right hook straight into Alucard's face. He was knocked backward slightly, and a quick sweep of his ankles made him fall further. Her hands were around his neck before his glasses shattered against the ground.

"You don't say a _word_ to him, you don't _touch_ him!" she screamed so loud she would be thankful later that the subbasement was soundproof. "Do you hear me!?"

Alucard leered and spat a fang onto the floor, making no move to escape her grasp. "It's rather selfish of you, keeping such important secrets. Besides," He said, his grin widening, "even if you can protect him from me, do you truly believe you can protect him from himself?"

She pushed him to the floor and let him stand back up. "That's none of your goddamned business. Jake's a good boy, and that's exactly how he's going to stay, with or without your stupid games!"

Seras walked briskly up the stairs, grinding her teeth all the way to the gym. She would tell him the truth; that much was certain. But not yet. He just wasn't ready.

And neither was she.

A/N Thanks for reading and be sure to tell me your thoughts, brief or long (preferably long).


	11. Sleeping Dogs

A/N: I'm SO sorry for keeping everyone waiting so damned long. Things have been pretty crazy on my end, with exams coming up and whatnot. However, I think the ball is rolling again, and hopefully won't slow down for a while. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: Don't own Hellsing. So don't bitch, Kohta Hirano.

**Chapter 11**

**Sleeping Dogs**

_February 6_

_Seras is around a lot more lately. She says she likes the change of pace. We do almost everything together now. She gets up when I do, feeds when I do, and even goes to sleep when I do. I never go to bed before she suggests it, though. Being around her is...it's hard to say. It's like being inside my own home. I feel safe, protected, but not lonely or isolated. Sometimes I wonder how she could possibly have been Alucard's fledgling; she's absolutely nothing like him at all. What could have attracted him to her? Was it just her looks, and he thought he could mold the rest to his liking? Maybe it's better if I don't know._

_We haven't had a mission since my first one, so things have been quiet. I can't say I'm looking forward to my next one. Then again, I can't say that I'm dreading it either. On one hand, it's my chance to be of help here, and, irony notwithstanding, it's for a worthy cause. Besides, it makes Seras happy when I succeed._

_But when I'm out there, blowing the heads off of poor, innocent people that have been reduced to puppets...I don't feel like a hero. I don't walk away feeling like I've achieved something. In fact, I feel like I'm falling backward, into some dark place I swear I've been before. I try to tell myself that this is just the way it is from now on, and I should accept that._

_Then I see Seras, who's been here for years, but hasn't fallen at all. I can't imagine her being any more of a beautiful person than she is now. If she can be the way she is after being here for so long, then I've got no excuse for letting this get to me. This is _just a job_; a way to earn my keep._

--

"So you haven't told him anything?" asked Sir Integra, disappointment vaguely hanging in her voice.

"No, sir," said Seras, as confidently as she could.

"And why?"

"He has too much on his plate right now. It took me long time to adjust to life here; and Jake's so young...it's just too much for him to handle it all at once."

Integra looked skeptical. "And so you plan on confronting him after he's adjusted?"

"Yes, sir. I'm keeping a close eye on him. If anything should...happen, I'll be right there."

Integra betrayed no distrust or apprehension, but Seras knew full well that she'd prefer to have this entire matter resolved as quickly and quietly, whether the results be good or bad. While she'd been somewhat sympathetic to Seras' own situation, the potential danger Jake posed was too high to go unnoticed.

"Where is he now?"

"At the range, sir," she answered, adding with pride, "He's actually a lot more dedicated than I was. No matter how good he gets, he always wants to do better."

To this Integra said nothing, but dismissed her quietly.

--

Jake looked at the paper slinking toward him and smiled. Three hundred yards. Dead center. Two in the head, three in the heart. The grouping was measurable only in millimeters, almost perfect. He thought of his shaky aiming in his last mission, and remembered that it wasn't all that impressive compared to Seras. He'd seen her hit the four-hundred yard target without even looking at it. He reloaded another magazine into the clip when he heard a vaguely familiar voice.

"Hey!" called a soldier he barely recognized from his first mission. "You got a package."

He had round cheeks and was a bit on the stocky side; taller than Jake was, but not by much. His head was shaved, but his dark hair was just beginning to regain its presence.

"A package?"

"Yeah, just came in early this morning, in the lounge." He was visibly unsure of himself, like he had drawn the short straw. Jake could only guess that he must have felt uneasy speaking to an undead rather than shooting one, but there was a hint of curiosity in his eyes. And that voice...he knew he heard it from somewhere before.

"Follow me." He said, motioning with his head.

Jake unloaded the gun and put it away as he left. The more he tagged behind the soldier to the lounge, the less sense it made to him. He couldn't even figure out who would send him a package at all, much less to an unlisted address, two months after he'd been declared legally dead. But he couldn't think of any reason this man would lie to him, either.

The soldier's lounge didn't look at all like a part of the Hellsing mansion. Cigarette smoke streamed to the ceiling, and could be tasted in the air like soot flavored soup. The tiles were streaked with scuffmarks from boots, tables, or chairs that had been dragged along them. The patchy, curling wallpaper was covered in posters of curvy pin-up models in a variety of alluring and provocative poses. He tried to keep Seras from coming to mind, and failed pretty miserably. He hoped no one noticed his blush. The card tables, two wooden and one plastic, were probably provided by the soldiers themselves, as two were a bit lopsided from uneven legs. A wall of 50-odd 8 by 11 mailboxes lined the far wall, ordered by number with simple key locks.

Instead of the hard stares he was used to, the soldiers took little notice of him at all. They dealt their cards, smoked, swapped filthy jokes, and cursed when their friend took all the chips as if he wasn't even there. One table of three, however, looked as if they'd been expecting him. A man in his late thirties with dirty blonde hair and conspicuous stubble looked at him warily, where the other two were busy talking amongst themselves until they turned to face him. A wrapped package the size of a shoebox sat at the center of the table. The soldier who had guided him pointed to it and left to sit at another table nearby before Jake had the chance to thank him.

The blonde man tilted his head in Jake's direction, gesturing for him to sit in the empty chair. Jake turned behind him a moment, getting the distinct feeling that while no one else was looking at him, everyone was listening.

"So...that's it?" he said quietly.

The man nodded, and Jake took the package. It felt light, but then again so did most things to him now. As far as he was adjusted to his knew strength, it could have weighed twenty pounds and he wouldn't know. It didn't have any return address, stamp, or a "FROM:" note, just "TO: Jake Rivers" written across the top in a black, felt tip marker.

"You sure you want to just open that?" said a voice from another table.

Jake turned to see that he the recognized the voice's owner. Mick sat backwards in his chair, with a look of concern on his face.

Jake bit. "What do you mean?"

Mick took a breath and explained with marked discretion.

"Well, it's unmarked. That's already good cause for suspicion. What with all this terrorism nowadays, you got to be careful with things like that."

His point was obvious, but the presence in the room seemed to shift, as though everyone had heard some secret catch word and were anticipating something. Mick pointed to the dirty blonde with a cigarette in his mouth.

"Riley here was in the bomb squad for three years, maybe he should take a look at it first."

Jake looked back at the man, who took the cigarette out of his mouth and blew out of billow of smoke. He raised an eyebrow, awaiting an answer.

"Well, if you think so..."

He slid the box over to Riley, who gave it a glance, put out his cigarette and lifted it. He checked the weight of it, and spoke in a rough Irish accent.

"Pretty light, but C4 doesn't weigh much. There could be enough in here to blow everyone in this table to pieces." He gave a Jake a cautious glance. "You're bloodsucker, so that might not mean much to you, but getting your arms ripped off ain't a great way to start your night, eh?"

Jake didn't laugh, because Riley's stony expression made it hard to tell if he should. He felt along the folds of the brown paper wrapping, across the top and sides. "Most package bombs are set off with wires that arm it when ripped or broken. Doesn't seem to be any, between the cardboard and the paper, anyway. 'Safest way to open things like this is from the bottom, since it ain't likely they'd put the wires there. 'That what you want?"

"Uh...ok..." the tension in the room made Jake's throat tighten up. He found himself wishing he'd just grabbed the package and gone. After all, why would anyone send him a bomb, anthrax, or anything for that matter? No one was supposed to know he was even still _alive_ (sort of).

Riley solemnly pulled out his combat knife and cut a slit down the middle of the package, taking his time, like a surgeon making an incision. Jake could hear the sound it made as it drug along the cardboard, switching direction a few times, opening a makeshift hinge.

None of it added up. If Mick was so suspicious, why didn't he clear the room first, or at least keep his distance? Why did no one else seem nervous? If it were up to Jake, he'd probably call in a proper bomb squad, clear the mansion, and—

"Get down!"

Seras was surprised when she found Jake wasn't at the range like she had thought, and even more so to hear that he had left with one of the soldiers, to the lounge, of all places. Most of them were still distrustful of him, but that was to be expected. It took a months for any of them to get used to her presence, and over a year before any of the soldiers began warming up to her (in a way that wasn't lewd or sarcastic, anyhow). She should have been glad that they were started to trust him a little more. Having non-professional contact with humans would help him to feel less isolated, perhaps even give him a sense of fellowship with those he fought alongside. Jake seemed to be the type that had trouble breaking the ice, and given all that he had to deal with, having friends (more importantly, _human _friends) would be a major step toward keeping him stable, maybe even a little happy.

Instead, she found herself walking a bit more quickly than usual, asking herself some very nerve-wracking questions along the way. What if one of them says or does something that sets him off? What if one of the soldiers saw him in a bad moment? What if he got rejected by them?

A sudden shout rang out from the Soldier's Lounge down the hall, followed by a loud, wet _BLAM._ In a panic, Seras rushed down the hall with preternatural speed, a thousand horrible scenarios playing in her head as she swung the door open.

Jake fell out of his chair, holding his arms to his face, expecting a pillar of flame to tear him in half. A surprisingly wet explosion erupted from the package, and a very distinct odor filled his nostrils.

When he finally opened his eyes, he'd realized that everyone was still standing, and that he was covered in a runny, oily liquid. Mick stood over him and smiled easily. He took a finger and swept it over a glob of the yellow-white fluid.

"See kid, someone's got it in for ya." He brought it to his lips and tasted it, "Garlic sauce."

Laughter filled the room, and after a brief period of shock-induced staring and blinking, Jake's wits returned and he finally understood what was going on. Mick offered his hand and gave him a good-natured slap on the back after he made it to his feet.

"I can't believe I didn't..." he trailed off as he saw Seras standing in the doorway, who had a peculiar look of exhausted relief on her face. She looked like she'd fallen off a cliff only to land on a ledge.

"Good God, Mick!" she chastised, her relief turning to an anger that seemed both uncharacteristic and out of place. "If Integra saw this, she'd have a bloody stroke!"

The soldiers were taken aback by her unusual intensity, but Mick didn't miss a beat. "No worries, love. We're just givin' the kid a proper initiation, nothing to get flustered over."

"Really, Seras, it's ok." Jake assured with a smile, "If I wasn't so dense, I would have seen it coming."

Seras sighed and relaxed a bit, but the worry was still evident in her voice, even as she returned his smile and patted his sauce-matted head. "Just hit the showers, alright? You smell like an Italian biscuit."

Though he wasn't sure what she was so concerned about, Jake nodded like a pleased child, and turned to leave.

"Hurry back, kid!" called Mick, "We're not done with you yet."

He called back that he would, filled with a new elation that he wasn't completely despised by those he worked with.

Some of the soldiers left the lounge, perhaps because they didn't realize the intention of the joke was to befriend, not mock, their new comrade. Through some profound feat of mental strength, ignored the overpowering smell of garlic and went back to what they were doing.

Seras gave a heavy sigh. If she wasn't undead, she'd have said that moment had taken at least a week off her life. She hoped no one noticed just how afraid she'd been when she saw Jake on the floor, covered in smelly goop, and the other soldiers standing over laughing at him. She'd watched his face as though it decided the fate of the world, and thankfully elected to allow it to endure for a while longer.

"You chose well, love," said Mick, breaking her train of thought. "He seems like a pretty good kid."

"Yes, he is," she said, careful to keep her voice from wavering. "I should thank you; Jake doesn't really have many friends here, besides me, that is."

"Don't sweat it." he gave a warm smile that always stood out on his squared face, "Human or not, working here...it does things to you. You gotta' know you're not alone if you want to keep your head screwed on right."

Seras nodded, and Mick turned to address the remaining dozen.

"What do ya' say we get some of our stash out for our new friend, eh?"

They were at the apex of a cheerful affirmation when Seras turned and gave them a sly smile. "And what makes you think you boys are getting out Scott-free? I want this place cleaner than Manchester Cathedral before anyone important gets that wind of that God-awful smell."

She was answered by a chorus of groans. It was good to be in command.

_February 8_

_Things are beginning to look up. After Mick and the boys hazed me I took about three showers and went back to the lounge. Suddenly, I felt like I was sitting with my old friends after a good show, gathering outside of a hotel we'd fooled into giving us just one room. It turns out the one who led me to the lounge, Manny Jackson by name, was one of the guys who guarded my door when I first got here, the one that wasn't an asshole, that is. I thought I'd recognized his voice somewhere._

_ It turns out that my method of recruited wasn't exclusive to just me and Seras. Riley was a part of an English SWAT team, and was shanghaied on the spot when he supposedly killed a vampire he ran into during a raid with nothing but his regulation riot gun. When I asked him how he'd managed that, he told the whole story with so much practiced enthusiasm I didn't even care whether or not it was actually true. When he finally got to good part, he stopped and asked me, "What's the difference between a vamp and a cockroach?"_

_I couldn't say, but he was quick to answer his own riddle: "A cockroach can live without a head."_

"_For only a week," added Mick, "Give Riley here enough gin and he can go a month."_

_Hellsing was filled with guys who'd fell into the gig with little more warning or introduction than I had. Some were just guys who took Hellsing's offer for higher paychecks and better benefits at face value, not bothering to ponder the meaning of the phrase "secret organization." Until Integra showed them footage of their new enemy tearing policemen apart in Cheddars, that is. It seems Hellsing has more unconventional policies than I realized._

_As for Mick, he was a corporal in the English Army, recruited more for his skill than the fact that his grandfather was once Integra's second in command before. He himself wasn't in a hurry to ascend the ranks, though; he liked where he was, right there in the firefight with everyone else._

_I told them some stories about my few but memorable times on tour with my band, and that kept them entertained until dinner was served in the cafeteria, which was kind of awkward. The smell of the food actually made me a little nauseous, so I knew I couldn't stomach it even if I tried. I found myself thinking of all the foods that couldn't eat anymore. Mick must have been reading my mind, because what he said next had the whole room in a bust._

"_Look on the bright side, kid; maybe people taste like where they come from."_

"_I'll bet Italians taste like lasagna," quipped Jackson._

"_What do you suppose Irishmen taste like?"_

_Riley perked up and said dryly. "Like cheap liquor and boiled potatoes, that's what. Hell, the fucking _air _in the Emerald Isle tastes like."_

_Another, particularly crass soldier, Alex I think was his name, peaked the joke when he said "If all that's true, then we should get some Chinamen on our frontlines."_

_I asked why, not sure where he was going._

"_Simple. If the vamps eat them, they'll pass out 30 minutes later and save us a whole lot of trouble."_

_The rest of the night went on just like that; laughing and joking and carrying on, like that's the way it always was. It seems like forever since I've had that much fun. Maybe things have turned out for the best after all. For the first time in weeks, I'm actually optimistic. I hope I stay that way._

A/N I wish I could squeeze more into this without it feeling incoherent, but things didn't work out very well, so I decided to post it as clean as I could. But look on the "bright" side, I've built up so much jarring optimism that you KNOW it's only a matter of time before I crush it into oblivion. Until then, read, review, flame, but please don't be silent! I need to know how many are still keeping the lights burning on this fic.


	12. Sleep Talk

Chapter 12: Sleep Talk

Jake shifted in his seat. He immediately regretted it, as the leather seat of the limousine made a conspicuous screech at even the slightest movement. Integra sat across from him, taking no obvious notice of the noise but staring straight ahead in that intensely focused way of hers. While Jake knew that she wasn't really looking at him at all, he also knew she was fully aware of everything he was doing, from the nervous shifting of his eyes to his needless, habitual breathing. Jake wasn't blessed with a very analytical mind, but his instincts usually served him well, or at least kept him out of trouble. He could never escape the feeling that, like Alucard, was always watching him, though her purpose seemed to be different, less personal.

Seras was right beside him as she always seemed to be, and like every other time, her presence made it easier to be sitting front of the woman rumored to have ice water in her veins. She had a quiet, confidence about her, the kind that tended to shine onto others. Especially Jake, who had all the self-assertion of a popsicle stick run over by an eighteen-wheeler.

In front of her sat Walter, in all his usual graceful formality and readiness. Integra never seemed to go anywhere without him, and the fact that he could stand so firmly when beside Hellsing's iron fist was reason enough to understand why. He did not speak to Seras, not out of any apparent distance between them, but out of some silent contract that this was the time for working, not talking.

The briefing was simple enough. What was believed to be a murder in one of London's wealthier suburbs showed several signs of a vampire attack, and thus prompted investigation by Hellsing.The victim was a middle-aged man named John Pearlman, a stock broker from Yorkshire who'd moved into the neighborhood a few months ago, and made few friends among his neighbors. What made things so awkward was that on Jake's first mission, he knew precisely what his job was and how he was supposed to get it done, but this time he wasn't sure why he was tagging along; he didn't have any skills that would help in this situation, and besides, Seras would have been more than enough to begin trailing their target. If Integra's conspicuous distrust in him was any indication, he certainly wasn't being enlisted as a back-up bodyguard.

Jake decided not to ask questions. They didn't need any reminder of what an unnecessary burden he was, and for that matter, neither did he.

The limo coasted to a stop and the faceless Welshman that was the driver announced they had arrived. Jake was careful not to try and get out before everyone else had, not so much out of fear as a strange dread that weighed him down the moment the door was opened. He was nervous, sure, but not the excited kind of nervous that had accompanied his first mission. It was a strange, confined, isolated kind of nervous, where no matter how many people were with him, he still felt as if he was completely alone.

He hated that feeling more than anything else.

By the time he shook himself from his brooding he was already passing through the front door of a house so plain it could easily be his own, sectioned off by yellow and black tape. Two impeccable men in white suits wearing latex gloves gave Integra a look of sudden fear disguised as well-earned respect, and then shot a nervous glance from Seras to Jake, taking a rather uncomfortable note of the patches on their arms. An inexplicable comfort went over him when he saw them look away the moment their eyes met, and while he didn't understand how, he felt that he had come one step closer to understanding his place in Hellsing.

They had arrived just as the initial investigators were leaving. They hadn't had a chance to more look through the house more thoroughly, since Hellsing took precedence in cases like this so they could determine whether or not this was a vampire attack.

They walked one by one into the living room, the spot the two cops had just scurried from like uniformed cockroaches. It was far cleaner than Jake had expected, the only massive bloodstain being a single stream splattered in a skewed angle on the corner of the whitewashed wall. The corpse lay in the ruins of a shattered, glass coffee table, his throat anomalously slit rather than bitten, and a pool of what little blood he had left had formed around the wound. His face was clean and white, and apparently, he wasn't becoming a ghoul anytime soon. A houseplant with thick, wide leaves stood untouched in the opposite corner, the only living witness to the crime. There were a few lesser spots on the beige leather couch. There was a strong smell in the air, but oddly, it wasn't blood. It was a harsh bleach-like smell that reminded Jake of the cleaner Walter used around the mansion.

"Oh, damn it all," huffed Integra, "He used ammonia. This blood is useless."

She turned her head just barely in Jake's direction and said, in her trademark unarguable tone:

"Rivers, Victoria, look around, see if you find anything our ever-vigilant police force hasn't." she added the last part of a hint of contempt reserved for those she deemed incompetent, which happened to be just about everyone except Jake that didn't work directly for her.

"Yes sir." He said quickly, while Seras nodded once.

They both went down the hall, Jake taking the bedroom at Seras' signal, while she took the back room and the garage.

--

Mr. Pearlman was, as Seras could tell, an extraordinarily picky man. Everything in his home was kept in a precise order, pecking order. All of his pictures were on precisely the same level, all the pens on his desk were kept parallel the to arms of the swivel chair parked in front of it, and every album (some of which where vinyl) was kept upright and in perfect alphabetical order, as were the books, most of which were cookbooks from four-star chefs across the world. On the old fashioned turntable was a 50-year old Beatles single "Yellow Submarine," and 

suddenly Seras' mind went back to a section she read in the case file that the only thing his neighbor's ever complained about was that he played his music too loud. Seras looked back at the record, and was suddenly filled with a revulsion she couldn't explain. It reminded her of the time her father had taken her to the London Aquarium when she was a little girl. She remembered, in the tunnel filled with sharks, how closely she had clung to his side until they were out. They were contained, harmless outside of their own contained field or out of water, but just being so close to them, with their empty eyes staring straight into hers, was enough to make her look twice whenever she got into a swimming pool. She left the room, deciding she had searched this room enough.

She walked passed the door Jake was in, but stopped for a moment, wondering if she should check up on him, but decided to be less overbearing and went through the garage. The lights were off, which was perfectly fine, but out of reflex, she turned them on. The garage was ordinary, like everything else, with a wiped-clean work desk, lined with power tools that all looked as if they'd recently been used, from a power drill to even a popcorn machine with just-dried filler at the tip. He must have been remodeling, though the house showed no signs of it. She had heard somewhere that evil lies in the most mundane places. If that were the case, this must have been the tenth level of Hell.

Something caught Seras' eye. It was so obvious that she was amazed she hadn't noticed before. In the garage, two cars were parked: one a champagne-colored Jaguar convertible, and the other, crouching beside it like a hairy wart, a dirty, paint-stripped van.

She scooted over to it, around the V8-powered beauty that surely belonged in this man's garage to the filthy mess that surely didn't. She tried to open the double-doors in the back of the van. It was locked, but why should that have stopped her? After one strong jerk, the doors flew open with the sound of bending metal.

The back was empty, except for one thing: two small leather hoops descending from the top. Seras knew of only one use for them, and if she was right, then there was more to this "victim" than they ever imagined.

--

Jake had almost finished searching Pearlman's bedroom. No clues whatsoever so far. In fact, everything was so normal it made him wonder if the murderer (vampire or otherwise) had cleaned the place up before he left. He wanted to leave, but there was one place he still hadn't looked: the drawer by the end table.

He ignored it the first time he noticed, because it was locked and the key was nowhere in sight. He guessed, considering the neurotic cleanliness that showed in every other part of the house, that he kept it on his person, and Jake wasn't about to mess with his corpse. The man 

already had the indignity of being a vampire's lunch, he didn't need another one poking around what was left of him.

Jake decided that breaking it open was the only option. He put his hand on the brass handle, and carefully, gave a single, quick pull. The lock snapped off like a toothpick, and a clump of Polaroid photos was revealed. Jake took the bundle in his hand, and looked at the first.

His eyes went wide.

Before he had any time to register what he'd seen, he heard a man's voice, calling hoarsely from the kitchen. Jake couldn't hear what he was saying exactly, but he did not sound pleased. Jake followed, involuntarily, hypnotically, even while he was screaming at himself to run from this house or call for Seras or hide in a closet and never come out.

He walked down the hallway, dropping a picture with every step, as though leaving a trail of crumbs to find his way home by. He heard the voice much clearer as he approached the kitchen.

"I asked you, _what the fuck are you looking at?_"

A man sat at the kitchen table, with a half-empty bottle of Heineken in his hands. His arms were thin but popping with wiry sinew. He wore a plain, sweaty T-shirt and had a mat of greasy, black hair sat on his head. His face was conspicuously clean and boyish, perhaps the only part of his appearance he took care of. For now, however, it was screwed into an indignant scowl at the little boy washing dishes as quickly as he could get away with.

"Nothing, sir." Said the boy quickly, on the edge of sobbing.

Enraged, the man threw the bottle at him, and the boy just barely ducked as it shattered against the counter edge.

"Don't insult my intelligence, you little sack of shit!" he bellowed, "I know you were staring at me!"

"I was...I was just...please, Dad—"

The man shot up from his chair, and to the boy's horror, he didn't remove his belt. He gripped him by the neck of his favorite T-shirt, the Transformers one his sister bought him, stretching it out beyond repair as he growled in his face.

"You think you get to judge me, don't you? Think I don't know what you're thinking every time I come back from a hard days work to keep your pussy ass alive and all I want to do is crack a beer? _Do you!_?"

Jake stood still for all of this, a passive observer and nothing more. He watched dispassionately as the man heaved the little boy across the room and into the table. He did nothing as the boy nursed his possibly broken arm, or as the man raised his fist, not satisfied with the damage he'd already done.

What he couldn't hold still for was what happened next.

The door was thrown open and a sweet, desperate voice cried out. A young girl, perhaps Jake's age now, tearfully pleaded with her father to spare the little boy any more suffering. She still had bruises on her face from the last time, but she kept on fighting for him, just as she always did.

"Stop it! Leave him alone, please!"

The man was already at her throat, throwing her onto the counter and, the ugliest expression of all, a smile spread across his face.

"Or you'll do what? I play poker with the half the precinct. You think you can stop me?"

The man replaced his oil-encrusted fingers around her neck again, and pressed her against the counter. Words finally escaped Jake's mouth.

"Don't touch her..."

The man petted her face in a disgusting parody of tenderness, while the boy crouched in the corner, not having the courage to try and stop him or even enough to run away.

Jake found himself right in front of him, his right hand in a fist so tight his nails drew blood from his skin.

"_I said DON'T TOUCH HER!"_

His fist swung in the air, but illusion faded. Instead, Jake's fist impacted popcorn wall, and spilled out a secret far more horrible.

--

Seras stepped out of the garage and found herself back in the same hallway. She stopped for just a moment, feeling something crinkle underneath her foot. A trail of photographs lined the floor, leading into the kitchen. She picked up the first one.

"My God..."

In the Polaroid picture was a little blonde girl of no older than 10, sedated and strapped to a custom-maid highchair, with all of her fingers except her thumbs missing. On the white part on the bottom, in a sharpie pen were the words "first course." The next one in the trail, the same 

girl, only with her eyes and tongue missing as well, the word "dessert" written in the bottom. With each picture, less and less of her was there, until only her partially shaved torso and mutilated head remained.

Pearlman wasn't a victim here. He was a monster.

She heard a scream from the kitchen. On the white tile floor, from a broken wall, was the decomposed remains of a little blonde girl's head and torso, and in the far corner, was Jake, crouched in the corner, his head in his hands, staring blankly at the corpse.

Integra and Walter, right behind her, were as speechless as Jake for a moment, but regained her composure almost immediately.

"For God's sake, Walter, call the police back, and let's get the Hell out of here."

--

It had been three hours since they had come back. Integra had confirmed by the absence of at least 3 pints of blood that Pearlman's death was, in fact, a vampire attack, albeit an unusually well-disguised one. There were no leads as to where the predator had fled to afterwards, and the ammonia he used precluded tracking him by scent.

But none of that meant anything to Jake right now.

He sat at his table, staring at his second blood pack with more disgust than the first time. It wasn't that he wasn't hungry; in fact, he felt like he hadn't eaten in a week. Even now, those insufferable hunger pangs were arching into through his veins, slowly moving from his heart to the arms and legs, then to his fingers and toes. It wasn't that he was still hungry in spite of what he'd seen, or that he was doing, in essence, the same thing Pearlman did, using pieces of people for food.

It was that he didn't feel hungry at all until he saw it.

Not just the normal craving one gets when they see a billboard for a steak. It was the kind you get when someone's chained you to a wall and starved you for days, and then cooks a steak right in front of you. A man had tortured, eaten, and killed a little girl. And it made him hungry. Not angry, not horrified, hungry.

_Just drink the damn thing and get it over with._

He looked at the pack of blood, marveling at how he could be so disgusted with something he wanted so much. Before he knew what happened his fist swung in an arc so fast he didn't even see it happen, launching the ice bucket across the room and sending ice cubes flying everywhere. The blood pack just flopped against the wall and onto the ground undamaged, as if to say "I'm still here, and you still need me." He shot up, as though it had offended him, 

pointlessly shut off the lights, ignored the sporadic ache that felt like pinpricks of a blind, dizzy acupuncturist, and hastily got under the covers of his bed. He didn't care how much it hurt to deny himself; a little girl had suffered and died, and damn it, he had to prove that it mattered to him, even if it was futile.

He turned his head away from the table that held his one and only meat, fruit, and drink for the undefined period that could dubiously be called "the rest of his life," and for the first time since all of this started, asked himself, _what am I turning into?_

_Feburary 13__th_

_Seras said it was okay if I took a break, seeing what I did. As much as I want it, I couldn't take it; after what happened, I have to prove that I can stomach working here. It's funny, because I'm still not sure exactly what it was I saw that disturbed me more: what was really there, or what I imagined was there. I was able to ignore it the first time, when it was just a momentary glimpse...but now I'm actually seeing these things played out. If these are my memories, then why would I recall them now, and why from the outside, like I'm not even a part of what I'm witnessing?_

_It doesn't matter. Who gives a shit if my dad beat me up? A lot of kids grow up with that, and worse. Besides, it's not like I was alone. But the fact is, I'm not just remembering things; I'm _seeing_ things._

_Seras must never know._


	13. My Idea of Fun, Part I

I do not own Hellsing. That belongs to Kohta Hirano. So nobody bitch at me for stealing his stuff.

A/N

Hey everybody! Sorry for the long, long wait. I actually intended to make this whole section one giant mega-chapter, but I didn't want to keep you guys waiting while I deliberated how to handle the second half. So, I decided to make it consist of two parts. The good news is, I already have an ending planned out perfectly in my head. All I have to do now is get to it, and I still have a long way to go.

Please enjoy and please, review! I need to know if this story is still alive, or if it's been dumped in a pit with all the other slow or crappy fanfics to get incinerated, buried, and deleted from public photographs like the Soviet Union political prisoners.

--

Chapter 13: My Idea of Fun, Part I

The morning was muggy, overcast, and cloudy. The light drizzle was just enough to get people to consider the subway rather than walking it, but not so much to where wearing a hood was optional. Most would shrug and go about the day, ignoring the habitually gloomy weather of London this time of year. But for Seras, the weather couldn't be more perfect.

She might have felt a bit ambivalent about denying Jake half a days' sleep if she wasn't so dead set on giving him a chance to have a little fun. Not to mention getting him out of that damn mansion for at least a couple of hours. No matter how unaffected he tried to act, that he had to have been reeling from all this. If he was going to be able to handle working here, he needed a break from time to time, to be reminded that there was a world outside of ghouls and guns and vampires and night sky.

He was incredibly skeptical when Seras told him they could leave the grounds at certain hours. He kept wanting to ask Integra himself, but Seras was able to convince him that if he went into her office like Oliver Twist asking "please sir, I want some more," he'd be likely to end up scrubbing toilets for a week just for wasting her time.

Even so, he kept looking around nervously as they walked along the wet sidewalk, as if he was afraid she might pop out of a trash can and shoot him an icy glare. To be fair, it did take some persuasion to allow this little outing. But his mental health was a very real concern, so if it kept him stable, and he was closely monitored, Integra would grant him at least some of the privileges she offered her other soldiers.

And if it wasn't Integra he was worried about, it was the weather. It took a good amount of coaxing to get him outside earlier than 7:00pm. It was understandable; being told that sunlight could kill you, then having your master waking you at 2:00pm saying that she wanted to go out must have been a bit confusing. But it was cloudy outside, and the clothes she gave him would provide him enough protection to avoid getting anything but bad sunburn should the clouds decide to part.

On the subject of clothes, she was more than happy to get out of that uniform for a time, and she knew that despite his other anxieties, Jake was too. Ever since she'd matured as a vampire, sunlight hadn't been a problem for her, so she dressed lightly but not revealing, as enough men stared at her as it was. She wore her white and pink striped shirt under by her grey vest, and her red beret made it easier to blend in. As for Jake, she dressed him in a grey hoodie, along with the jeans she'd found him in.

"Where are we going?" he asked, more like a helpful suggestion than a direct question.

Oddly enough, it was the first time in the twenty minutes they'd started walking that he'd asked that. Now that she thought about it, he wasn't very prone to asking questions, but if he was, he probably couldn't have made it as far as he had.

"You'll see." She said dreamily, a mischievous smirk on her face.

They descended down the stairs to the tube, making their way past the seemingly infinite number of passersby. These huge masses of people served as a reminder of who she was protecting, but at times she couldn't help but think of them as red blood cells flowing through a major artery. And if they represented a body, then vampires must have been a virus. And if vampires were a virus, then was Hellsing the vaccine, using the same virus against itself?

She pushed such musings out of her mind for the moment and paid for the two tickets. Jake gave her a strange look, as if seeing her use money broke some sort of rule.

"Work for Integra long enough, she'll throw you a few pounds here and there. It's not much, but it's good for a rainy day."

It took a moment for the pun to register, and when it did, he laughed nervously, as though he wasn't sure how to take it. Seras smiled to disguise the small twinge of guilt in her throat, and ushered him into the train. Her mistake might have cost him his first life, but she'd do all that she could to make it up in his second. Hopefully, today could be a small step toward that end, to show him that even if he'd been shanghaied into Hellsing's endless war, he didn't have to be consumed by it.

They stood side by side on the train, with Jake shifting nervously, and trying to make it look like it was the movement of the train. Seras had the distinct feeling he wasn't very fond of crowds, and wondered what it must have taken to get someone like him in front of a crowd of two-hundred or so strangers to perform music without him bolting the scene like a rabbit from a stampede. Maybe it was because he was with people he trusted, who were right there on the stage with him. He was on a new stage now, with far more than rejection at stake, and Seras wasn't going to leave him alone in the spotlight.

They got off at 32nd, and took to the street again. They'd walked two blocks when Jake stopped suddenly. Seras turned and saw that he was looking at a homeless man, asleep, with a Styrofoam cup in his lap. He glanced back at Seras, and after a moment, she understood. She threw a few shillings in the cup and they walked on. Just as Jake was about to repeat his first and only question of the day, Seras pointed to an old, run-down building with a ticket booth in front.

"When's the last time you've been to a picture, eh?"

He thought for a moment, as though she'd asked him. "I don't really remember, probably a year ago. Maybe more."

"Well, then you're overdue." She said with mock-disgust. "Which one looks good to you?"

He turned toward the ragged, tattered posters, hung across the entrance in tarnished frames. They were all older movies, and a few he probably had never even heard of. The poster of a zombie's rotten, drooling maw was almost enough for him to reach for a pistol that wasn't there. He looked up and saw the title of the 70s production "Dawn of the Dead" stretching across the top and cringed.

"'Little too close to home?"

His discomfort shattered, and for the first time that day, she'd gotten an honest laugh out of him. She hoped it wouldn't be the last.

"Yeah, I guess so." He said, scratching the back of his head. "I never thought I'd be saying that."

"Imagine my reaction when I read 'Interview With a Vampire.'"

They eventually decided on an old 1930s silent movie called "The Man Who Laughs." It was about a man who's face had been surgically fixed to have a constant, wide grin. The Alucard jokes died quickly as the movie went on, when the irony of the title was revealed in that no one could tell if the man was laughing or crying. Seras stole glances at him periodically, trying to get a sense of whether or not he was enjoying himself, and found that he was doing the same, though perhaps for different reasons.

For Seras, this was a place of some her most cherished memories. She and her father used to spend hours at a time here, watching the movies that he and his father used to enjoy together before the area was bombed by the Germans in World War II. This theatre prided itself on showing movies made at and before that time, making it a little-known historical landmark. She wanted to tell him these things, but while she sat here, in the very same seat as she had as a little girl, she couldn't help but wonder; did Jake have any good times to revisit, anything at all to comfort him when he was alone? Or did he forget those as well, for fear they would bring about the cruel ones?

"That was a good one," she said, as they walked out of the theatre. "What do you...think..." she trailed off as she realized that Jake wasn't there.

He'd lagged behind as they'd left the theatre, looking to the ground with a very thoughtful, even serious expression on his face.

"Something wrong?"

He broke from his trance, and gave a disarming smile. "It's nothing," he said, but reconsidered, "It's just...she was blind, so she had a chance to get to know him before she knew what he really looked like, right?"

He was thinking about the movie, that much was good, but his concern seemed out of place.

"Right." She answered, trying to figure out where he was going with this.

"But what if she never had the chance? What if she knew truth from the start? Would she still have felt the same way?" He seemed lost in thought, but at a loss as to why it was important to him.

Seras swallowed hard and hoped he didn't notice. Her mind went back to that fateful night when she'd discovered what Jake had been hiding from himself; when she'd run into him in the hallway and had the chance to do what she knew was the right thing. The chance she'd had every day since then, that she'd consistently failed to take for fear of the consequences.

"Well...I..." for a moment, Seras forgot just which question she was answering. Right now, all she wanted to do was set up a day that he'd actually _want_ to remember. If she could create enough, maybe, just maybe, it could make the truth a little easier for both of them when the time came.

"I'm sorry," he said, no doubt seeing that something was troubling her, "I had fun, I just think too much sometimes. I didn't mean to be so serious."

"Smashing!" Seras perked up, delighted at the change in tone, "because I haven't even started with you yet!"

She pulled him farther down the street and pretended not to notice the momentary haze of red on his cheeks at her choice of words. She didn't mean to tease him; it was just the best way she knew to get his guard down, and it seemed to be working.

The light drizzle faded as the sun set invisibly behind the clouds. The sky was painted in strokes of orange, pink, and green. It was obvious to Seras that Jake appreciated site, perhaps even more than she herself did. He didn't smile, but his eyes were still, fixed on the twilight, lost in thought.

They had come to a local park to relax, and perhaps to talk, but Jake was being very quiet, much as he had been in the theatre, though without the concentration that had concerned her. She thought it best to let him enjoy the peace.

He looked down from the sunset, at the pair of children who didn't let the wet sand stand in the way of building their castle.

"My sister, Ceil, used to take me to places like this." He said, his voice was somewhere between nostalgia and sadness. "She told me that the twilight was beautiful because it was the time when darkness and light came together."

A mild, peculiar shock went through Seras, then dissipated. He had never talked about family before. In fact, he'd always become guarded, anxious, even a little afraid when she'd brought up the subject in the gym those many weeks ago. Knowing what she did, and what he didn't, it was a little startling for him to bring up the subject so suddenly, so sincerely.

Had he really grown to trust her that much?

"I never understood what she meant by that; but whenever she said it, she'd always be looking at me, not at the sky."

He trailed off for a moment, and Seras kept silent, sure that she'd dig herself into a hole if she said anything. He turned his head to her, his expression gone from bittersweet to thoughtful.

"I'm sorry if I sound rude, but come to think of it, I really don't know a lot about you, except that you used to be a cop."

"Well, there's really not much to tell." She said, suddenly feeling she had to keep her own past a secret as well as his.

Jake wasn't convinced. "You weren't always a cop, right? I mean, you had to have started somewhere."

Seras still balked internally, but his curiosity wasn't going away, and in all fairness, for all she knew about him, he at least deserved to know a bit about her. She took a deep breath and began.

"I was born in 1981, here in London, in December. My father was a cop, and even though Mum was good to me too, I guess I always was Daddy's little girl."

Seras scanned Jake's face, looking for any discomfort at the mention of the word "father." She didn't see any, but perhaps it was because of his completely undivided attention that it didn't conjure anything. With no red flags in sight, she continued.

"No matter how hectic his work would get, he would always find time for me. He and I used to watch crime dramas together, even when I was too young to understand them. He would always point out all the little things the Tele people were doing wrong, like he was training me for the day I would join the force. I didn't need much of a push, though. Daddy was a local hero, and whenever he came home from work, hung his hat, and tucked away his badge, I thought to myself: 'that's what I want to be.'"

Seras realized that her gaze had slowly drifted from Jake back the pastel sky, and readjusted, thinking she might look rude if she wasn't looking at him. But Jake wasn't confused, put off, or even engaged. In fact, in his warm smile was something she'd never really seen in him, but always wanted to.

He was happy.

Seras had seen him smile when she comforted him, heard him laugh here and there at one of Mick's jokes, but never that rare, honest, subtle elation that she was witnessing now. And all she did was talk about herself.

"I'll bet was really proud when you joined the force."

"He...would have been." She said with sheepishly.

Two explosions. A cruel voice gloating _"How'd you like that!? Fucking copper!"_

"I'm sorry," he said regretfully, breaking her out of her momentary trance, "I didn't mean to—"

"No," she cut him off, "That was long ago. It doesn't bother me anymore. He...died in the line of duty when I was seven."

It wasn't the whole truth, but he didn't need to know the specifics. Maybe later, when he'd gotten past his own problems, she would tell him. But not now, and certainly not today.

"What about your mother?" he suggested hopefully.

"She's...gone too. Cancer."

Ok, so maybe that was a complete lie. But "killed and then raped" wouldn't have been the best way to liven the mood. This had been shaping up to be a good day for him, and she wasn't about to ruin that with her own baggage. Regardless, Jake seemed to be bearing it for her anyhow.

"I was lucky." She said, before Jake could express any further condolences. "A lot of children grow up alone all their lives. I...had a good childhood, however long it lasted."

He paused a moment , out of either respect or hesitation. "So when did you join the force?"

"I was barely 18; so young compared to the others they called me 'Kitten.'"

"It must have drove you crazy."

"At first...but somehow, in the four years I was on the force, it grew on me."

"Four years?" he said, confused. "That's not very long. What happened?"

_Oh God. _Seras groaned internally. _Crawl out of one hole, and you dig yourself another._

"Well, I guess you could say I died."

Jake's eyes widened a little. "You mean...that's when you..."

"My unit and I were investigating what we thought was a riot in Cheddar village," she began, unsure if telling him this was the best idea. He and Alucard had enough bad blood already, but damn it, she'd lied to him enough for one day. The least she owed him was a _little_ honesty.

Jake waited, his attention completely undivided, like a grammar school kid during story time, for her to continue."

"It turns out the 'rioters' could eat bullets for breakfast and their 'instigator' was a priest from the local church. My unit was wiped out in less than a minute, and I ran away."

"You sound like you regret it."

"Sometimes," she admitted, "but if I hadn't, I wouldn't have ran into...wait, I'm getting ahead of myself."

She paused, collecting herself, and continued. "The vampire chased me down. It could have killed me at any time, really; I guess he just thought I'd taste better with adrenaline." She gave a weak laugh, but her jest was lost on Jake, who listened with an almost eerie seriousness.

"That's when Alucard showed up. The vampire thought he could use me as a human shield, but Alucard would have none of it. To kill the vampire, he..."

Jake tensed. He wasn't going to like this, but she was too far in to quit now.

"He shot through you, didn't he?" he said, but his eyes were elsewhere.

"...yes, he did."

His face twisted into a scowl. "And I'll bet he didn't bother giving you the option until you were bleeding to death on the floor. Am I right?"

"Yes."

His voice held no distinct malice, but there was a focused, calculative edge to it that didn't fit him at all.

"The way I see, he may as well have taken you hostage himself. People like him see something they want, and they'll do anything to get it, no matter who gets hurt in the process."

He spoke with a sense of authority that made it difficult for Seras to mount any defense for her former Master (not that he would have cared), but she tried nonetheless.

"That might be true, but if he hadn't shown up when he did, I wouldn't be here talking to you, would I?"

"And if he'd decided to do his job and save your life, rather than take it for himself, you'd still be on the force, still human, like you wanted."

Seras sighed. "Jake, please listen to me. Whatever happened then is between me and Alucard, alright? There's no need for you to get all twisted up over something that happened over a decade ago. I've moved on. Besides, how I was turned really has nothing to do with the issues we have now."

"I think I know what does."

"You...do?"

"Because you haven't changed."

He was looking back at her again, but like he had before.

"I'm not sure I follow."

"You're strong, Seras, and you have a heart. I always wondered were those two things must've come from. Alucard told me once that we can't be human by the nature of what we are, that we're all destined to become animals. But when you started talking about your father, the way your eyes lit up...I don't really know why, but it made me believe him even less than I did before. You had the same look in the theatre, like it was something special to you. I haven't been a vampire long, Seras, but I can tell already that it can be a struggle sometimes. But you remember who you are, where you came from, and what's important to you, and that makes you strong. I think Alucard knows that deep down, you still have what he lost, and he resents you for it, because he can't drag you down with him."

Who was this person she was talking to? It couldn't have been the same boy she had to coax out the door, who quailed under Integra's slightest glance.

" I think," he finished, with a graceful finality more suggestive of a poet than someone his age, "that if your dad could see you now, he'd be just proud to be your father, as I am to be your fledgling."

Seras opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. To say that she was flattered would be an understatement: no one had ever said anything even remotely as gracious as what he'd said so simply. All the more striking was the calm certainty of his words, the complete absence of doubt. He usually didn't sound very sure of anything, but at this moment he spoke as if he had known her his whole life, and was only stating what he knew to be true. She didn't even tell him the whole truth, yet even from the lies he could discern something so intimate.

With his awkward, naive nature, and seeming inability to stand up for himself, even though she didn't want to believe it, she could at least _conceive_ of a monster hiding behind it. Repressed anger always disguises itself as fear and nervousness. But this person in front of her wasn't any of those things. This boy in front of her was a perceptive, thoughtful, even confident, backed with a very subtle, almost imperceptible strength. Suddenly, Ceil's earlier words came together, like two puzzle pieces.

_Darkness and Light._

Jake's soul was ripped in half eight years ago. This was glimpse, just a glimpse, of what he could have been, what he could still be, if only he could piece himself together.

And then it was over.

A shrill, electronic beep pierced startled them. Seras fished through her pocket for her phone, which only had one number programmed into.

"Yes sir?" she said, as though at attention.

"We have a situation in the tube." said Integra quickly, "we need the two of you on site immediately."

"Yes, sir," she said, disguising the disappointment in her voice, "We'll head back to base—"

"There's no time," barked her commander, "the tunnels are already clogged with ghouls, and the vampire has disabled most of the train routes. I have three squads en route, and one to the 32nd street station. You'll have to go in as you are. They'll be weapons waiting for you at the station, now move out!"

Jake's face returned to its passive, worried mask, like a hermit crab retreating to it's shell, and they stood up, taking one last look at the sky. A moonless, starless night had fallen.

Seras turned to Jake, with the same look she gave him when they first met; a silent, unspoken way of saying "we're in this together." His face straightened, and he nodded.

"Let's go."

--

A/N:

Sorry there wasn't much action here, but I'll make it up, don't you worry. So when you're done reviewing, you can start wondering what will happen in the next installment: My Idea of Fun, Part II.

Until then, my beloved readers.

Sincerely,

MindAsylum


	14. The First Step

Chapter 14:

It was 6:47pm at the 32nd street metro station. On any other night, it would have been flooded with travelers, most of them just coming home from the day's work or just beginning late shifts. They would get on their train, dodge each other's glances, ignore the stench of sweat, garbage, and exhaust as well as the omnipresent noise of trains and conversations and blasting iPods, all the while trying to think of the people that made it worth their time.

But tonight it was quiet, save for the clicking of magazines and the sound of boots hitting the concrete floor, and the prevailing scent was one familiar only to those who knew the reasons why.

Jake Rivers knew. If he hadn't have fed once today already, he would have found it insufferable.

"It's a bloody mess, ma'am," began Riley's status report as Jake loaded the BAERLKS rifle, "We had the bastard cornered, then he pulls a Houdini and goes straight for the Metro right in the middle of rush hour. We shut the place down and evacuated everyone we found."

"What about the people whose trains were still moving?" asked Seras.

Riley didn't miss a beat. "There was one in the west tunnel, a station and a half away. Ten to one they're already dead, and we don't have the time or the men to check. Besides, we've got reinforcements closing off that way, in case the target tries to escape through Maintenance Access."

Jake grimaced. Why was it, he wondered, that for all of Hellsing's resources, they always managed to show up just late enough for the vampire to have his lunch?

Seras nodded gravely, and hefted the massive Harkonen over her shoulders like it was plank of wood. "Right then, we head through the east tunnel. Rivers and I will be your support. Let's move out."

It was strange, seeing her armed and in civilian clothes, as though it exemplified how she sheathed her strength inside her beauty and gentleness, only letting it show when it was needed. Jake held the BAERLKS at the ready.

"We've got second and third squads covering the first two tunnels, but we need your support for the east tunnel toward Manchester."

Riley turned toward his squad of fifteen, Jackson being among them, and barked his orders in his rough, Irish accent. "You heard the lady, let's move out!"

Jake looked back to the west tunnel. It didn't seem right to just ignore the people that very well could still be alive simply, even if it would increase the vamp's chance of escape.

"Come on, kid," Riley said impatiently, "what's the holdup?"

"Those people could still be alive. We can't just leave them out to dry!"

"Jake..." began Seras, doubtless about to tell him not to argue the point, but it was guilt more than anything else that made him speak, and as much as he hated to cause problems for her or anyone, he just couldn't stay quiet on this.

"Well what you want me to do, kid?" said Riley, like a father explaining to his son why people fight wars. "We need to close off every exit, or the bastard might bolt, and that train is a good clip past the last maintenance door. We send in men to check, she could just walk out the door and past us. Alucard is ghoul cleaning in the West London tunnel, so he can't support us. We're already spread thin as it is, and I don't want a score of men dying for a train full of corpses."

"Then let me go."

The words sounded so strange coming from his mouth that for a moment he wasn't entirely sure he was the one who said them. One look at Seras' face was proof enough.

"And what happens if you run into the target alone?" she chastised, like an overbearing mother, "You don't have the experience to—"

"Then I'll call for the squad blocking the exit, they can cover me."

"We don't have any idea how many ghouls are between there and here." Seras went on, practically grasping for straws.

"What difference does that make? I'm armed, they're not."

"Out of the question. I'm not letting you risk your life for—"

"Then what the Hell am I doing here!?"

He said it much louder than he meant to; it echoed many times before the tunnels fell quiet again. He snapped at her. Seras was his master, his best friend, and he snapped at her. He wanted to apologize, to tell her to forget about it, to just keep on going, but then she turned to Riley, who just shrugged, and said, "Your vamp, your call."

"Please..." he said, his voiced tinged with regret, "I just want a chance, that's all."

Seras looked back up at him, suddenly reminding Jake of how much taller he was, and her face conflicted and uncertain, an unsettling change from her usual confidence. She plucked a radio from her side and handed it to Jake.

"If you find anyone, guide them through the tunnel where third squad is waiting; I'll tell them you're coming. The _second_ you see _anything_, you call for backup, and do _not engage,_ understand?"

Jake took it, and nodded tersely. He had never thought of himself as being "brave." Not by a longshot. He just hated the idea of a train full of people being eaten alive just because no one was willing to take a chance.

_I won't let you down, Seras, _he thought to her.

_Just come back in one piece, and you won't,_ she said with the soft smile she reserved for him, and him alone.

He turned and sprinted into the tunnel, vanishing into the opaque shadow. It mattered little to him; he could see just as well. He just wished he was better at disguising the echoing crunch of gravel made by each step. If the target was out this way, he'd have already heard him a station away. He'd have to ask Seras about that later: vampires were supposed to be stealthy, but Jake might as well have been a galloping horse for all the noise he was making. It didn't really matter, he supposed: if the vampire got spooked and tried to flee in the opposite direction, then he'd get mowed down by the perimeter Hellsing set up. If he tried to meet Jake head on, well, then things might get ugly.

He'd never faced another vampire before, and especially not alone. He was too focused on potential survivors to worry about it before, but now, with the dark closing behind him and stretching endlessly in front of him, and the silence that broke only by his own footfalls, he began to wonder if he should have heeded Seras warning. If they were both undead, then surely that would level the playing field.

Wouldn't it?

The more he watched the brick surrounding him pass by in a blur, the more he realized that he'd never given himself the time to marvel at the physical prowess being undead brought him: he wasn't getting tired or even strained. It might have simply been the bag of blood that Seras kept in her jacket just before the mission, but even so, he knew he never could have kept this up as a human.

There was a light ahead, meaning he was about to come upon the station. The train couldn't have been much farther. He would have simply sped past it, but he heard something that stopped him dead in his tracks: footsteps.

They were quick and light, barely audible over Jake's own, but their rapid succession meant one of two things: either a civilian with short legs was looking for an exit, or the target was doing the same. Jake put his back to the wall, clutching the BAERLKS in his hand. A cold feeling crept into his gut, and he ceased breathing, thankful for once that he had no audible vital signs. He stepped as carefully as he could, praying that Seras wouldn't call him on the radio. The flickering florescent lights betrayed no movement, the tunnels echoing no sound, not even a draft.

Sidestepping as quietly as he possibly could toward the station, hating the unseemly silence and stillness of the place, he found a whole new appreciation for Hellsing's human soldiers. What must it have been like, to constantly face creatures so much more powerful than you, hiding in places you can't see, moving in ways you can't hear, knowing that one missed shot, one cough, could mean becoming its meal or worse, its puppet, all the while paradoxically being forced to work with the same creatures? And when the night's work was over, no public recognition was given, and they had to tell their wives and children that the security job was going great, and that their pension _might_ cover their college funds. No 

other soldier in the world could boast that, and for that matter, Hellsing couldn't either. The secret had to be kept above all else.

_For all they have to lose, they face this every night, without so much as a "thank you ". _He mused. _And here I am, a vampire, with no family, no friends, no life outside of Hellsing. What excuse do _I _have?_

Jake broke cover, sweeping his rifle into the light and around the station. Nothing but empty benches and full trash bins.

Then he looked down.

Bloody footprints; leading from out of the men's bathroom to a large bloodstain on the bench in the center. They were probably sneakers by the look of the soles, and they were small—too small for any adult. A tiny, rust colored handprint was stuck to the door where it had been pushed open. This couldn't have been the target...could it?

Jake felt himself being pulled toward the door, following the footprints. Trembling, his hand found the handle, and in a single, frantic motion, he pulled it open.

The footprints continued, coming from a stall on the far end. Spurts of blood congealed on the white tiled walls, trickled off the mirror, but invoked none of the bizarre hunger it normally did. Suddenly, he felt as if he'd returned to his days as one of the living; when blood made him dizzy and sick, rather than anxious and hungry, when it was not a food source but a reminder of the painful frailty of life.

And how easy it was to snuff out.

He found himself at the front of the stall, where the footprints ended. There was a pool of blood at his feet, and idly, he realized his heart was beating, his lungs frantically sucking in air as if it was a necessity again, and there was a cold sweat brimming on his forehead. Even so, impossibility of what was happening was lost on him, as he took a deep breath, and pushed the stall door open.

Sprawled on the piss stained, pubic hair-ridden floor, was a mangled hunk of meat and black fur that might have once passed for a dog. Its head had been smashed to pieces, and the rest of it was so twisted and broken that it was impossible to even guess at the breed. One of the pieces still had an eye, and as Jake looked upon it, he felt a sensation he hadn't since becoming a vampire.

He snapped around and lurched into the sink. Thick, reddish-brown vomit splattered across the white marble counter, oozing down the edge onto the floor like rotted meat juices dumped outside a butcher shop. The sight and smell of it was enough to make him dry-heave several more times before his heartbeat vanished and his breathing stopped. He ran the water over his hands and washed his face, as though tainted by what he'd seen. After a the few minutes it took for his nausea to go away, he brought his head back up to the mirror, to see if he'd washed the blood off of his mouth.

And found that the dog was gone.

Not only that, but the footprints that had once lead toward the corpse, were now leading away.

A bloodstained, child-sized jacket hung halfway out of the trash can on the opposite side. He regarded it for a moment, and felt soiled, as though he'd just taken it off himself. He opened the door, and sitting on the bench, staring blankly at the wall, was a small child.

His hair was sticky with sweat, and streaks of dry blood congealed on his face. His blue T-shirt was clean, but his pants and shoes were covered in reddish-brown stains. A jagged piece of rebar lay at his feet, covered in blood, hair, and chunks of red meat. He turned to Jake, never breaking from his stare.

"I never liked dogs," he said, in a voice monotone and disconnected, as it were really a ventriloquist speaking through him, "you never know if they'll bite."

The fluorescent lights shined so brightly in Jake's eyes that he had to look away. He blinked away the blur, but the boy, and the blood, were gone. Jake stared at the bench, as though the child might reappear and explain the bizarre nightmare. It didn't happen.

That couldn't have been a memory, not like the one before, but then what was it? A daydream? A vision? Was it his own mind fighting against him, sabotaging any potential success with a horrifying image to paralyze his will to act? He couldn't allow it. Jake shook his head, trying to physically prevent any doubts of his sanity from settling into his consciousness. The mission and a train full of potential survivors were at stake; now wasn't the time to play psychoanalyst with himself. He had a job to do.

He repeated this thought again and again, like a mantra, his vision still a little blurry, and with his icy nausea refusing to let go as he pressed on, hoping that this brief stop in wonderland hadn't cost dozens of people their lives. Another stretch of darkness, this one longer than the one before, and his footsteps seemed louder the closer he got to that train.

He stopped as the smell of burnt blood hit his nostrils, still inducing that strange sickness in him, like someone offering you a third Twinkie when you know the first two might have given you cancer. No screams, groans or shuffling steps. He prayed it didn't mean what he thought it did.

He found the first body ten yards later.

It was a middle-aged man with graying hair and a growing bald spot, wearing a drab brown sweater that reminded him of an old English teacher he had in high school. He was sprawled on the tracks, the limbs contorted, poking out at odd angles like a squished bug, but not broken. The right hand rested on the third rail, most of the skin blistered and peeled back by the thousands of amps that had ran through it in what was probably an escape attempt. His eyes were wide open, as if held by scotch tape, staring along the darkened tracks that stretched on for miles. Not a bite mark on him. The vamp must have liked his meat rare.

He checked the pulse anyhow, still holding out some kind of hope that the current didn't stop his heart. No dice. He was spared the fate of a ghoul, but for Jake, this wasn't near enough. Without 

knowledge of what you were faced with, were those really the only options when you were hunted these creatures? A quick death? A momentary turn as a puppet for the amusement of some depraved monster?

Joining their ranks?

Ahead lay the train, where the scent was so strong Jake gagged. It smelled like bad food, the kind that sits in the back of the refrigerator for months, and is unidentifiable by the time common sense dictates that it be thrown away. That smell meant that they'd be ghouls within the hour, maybe even sooner, where either he or Hellsing's soldiers would have to dispose of them.

The moment he got onto the train from the open emergency door, raised his rifle, pressed it against the first victims head—an elderly woman in a flannel shirt and a grey skirt--submersed in that God-awful smell; surrounded by the drying bodies of a dozen men, women, and children who's only crime was wanting to get in home in time to catch BBC or eat their dinner warm or stare at the ceiling wondering what to do with themselves; these ordinary, naïve people, the reality of it hit him:

He failed.

_BLAM!_

More specifically, he failed _them_. He'd argued with his commanding officer, snapped at his best and only friend, and risked his own unlife only to show up a day late and a dollar short. A single flash of light erupted in the room, highlighting what remained of his work.

Another victim, this one a girl, not much older than he himself, her Ipod headphones still in her ears, still playing some grotesquely cheery pop song. He idly wondered if that made the vampire's job any easier.

_BLAM! _

Hellsing's duty was to protect people, not sweep them under the rug and file them under "collateral damage," like they were broken toilet seats or bullet holes in the side of a building. It was _his_ duty. And he failed.

_BLAM!_

Maybe his "dream" had slowed him down just enough for the vamp to get away, or maybe, like Riley said, they were dead before helping them even entered Jake's mind. Either way, it changed nothing. They were still dead, and all Jake could do for them was make sure they stayed that way.

_I'm not a soldier, _he thought, _I'm a janitor with a gun._

He finally made his way to the engineer's cockpit, where he was sure the last victim was just beginning to twitch back to life. Lost in his own disappointment, it was no surprise that he didn't see the 

shadow move out the corner of his eye, or hear the whisper quiet footsteps against the thin, stained carpet over the sound of his gun clicking as he prepared to load another magazine.

The cold iron of the crowbar sank into his temple like a nail into an orange. He dropped his gun and for a moment all he could see were the hands of his assailant: pale and thin with long fingers and nails, painted red. He didn't even remember his face smashing through the thick, Plexiglas window, just that he was on the ground, his face sunk in the gravel, covered in his own blood—or did it technically belong to someone else?

He felt himself being lifted by the lapel of his uniform, and he managed to get a vague outline of her face. Gaunt, pale, and bony, just like her hands, only with more red smeared about her lips and neck like a bibless two-year old, with the gleaming, bloodshot eyes of the dope fiends that held the high school kids at knifepoint back in L.A. The kind of face you'd only see as pretty after your fifth shot of vodka and a decade of celibacy. Her teeth were red like the rest of her mouth, so in the crimson haze it seemed she just had a gaping, vacuous hole where her mouth should have been.

It was no surprise that she was mistaken for a man. In fact, Jake was convinced that the creature that held him was never even a person, just some warped animal that barely resembled one. Like a walking stick bug that blended in just enough to go unnoticed.

She spoke then, or at least it looked like she was speaking: his brain hadn't healed enough to make out any real words, but somehow he was able to gather her meaning.

"Are you afraid?"

It was funny, because if his head hadn't been bashed in, he might have asked himself the same question. Not waiting for an answer, she reared back a fist, much like Alucard had in the woods weeks ago, and slugged him the face, turning his nose from splinters to dust and sending him skidding across the gravel floor.

His head had mostly healed by now, but as he reached for his sidearm, the vampire's foot connected with and broke his ribs, sending him careening into the wall. He got off a one shot, but it was thrown off by his back meeting the wall, and disappeared harmlessly into the gravel beside his target.

Finally able to land on his feet, he knew she was too close to attempt a shot just yet. He threw a right hook at her face and she ducked, jamming her elbow into his gut, nearly breaking the skin, and followed with an uppercut that broke his jaw in two.

It didn't take long for him to figure out that he was outclassed. This vampire didn't just know how to fight; it knew how to use every ounce of its strength into each strike with the cunning savagery of a tiger.

Seras, "_You really need to stop holding back."_

Alucard, "_Are you flinching again!?"_

His father, "_Worthless little pup!"_

The whispers echoed over and over until the sound of his own pulse drowned them out. The searing pain the flowed through every capillary burned hotter now that ever before, but no longer sourceless, shooting pain, but as a need, as an instinct denied for far too long.

Suddenly, as the backs of his eyes burned in time with his heart, Jake had an answer for the vampire who held him by his throat, ready to tear his heart out with her bare hand. He wasn't afraid.

He was hungry.

Just as the vampire began her killing stroke, Jake's hand, all on its own, grabbed its wrist like it was nothing but a child reaching for a cookie. He twisted and pulled, ripping off its arm at the elbow. A noise, like a splintering tree, resounded through the tunnel, followed by a shrill scream. One of the bones in her forearm was still there, left to dangle like a broken wing.

The vampiress pulled back, still screaming , perhaps more out of shock than pain, and Jake found it agreeable to his ears, like the first on-key note he ever struck.It looked up at him, nursing its stump, confused and horrified, making the face of a little girl who just got slapped by her mother for the first time. It growled, more to the air than to him, and turned away to run, but Jake wouldn't have that. Not at all.

He picked up his sidearm, a custom pistol that fired 50 caliber rounds, and blew off its kneecaps with two successive shots. She collapsed to the floor and Jake walked over, as it she frantically tried to crawl on arms and broken legs to the station, to the dark, to anywhere that was safe.

Food.

That's all she was to Jake now. That's all the people on the train had been to her: something to satisfy a need, a fix that would be taken from, discarded, and forgotten like a used syringe. And by the terror in her eyes as she looked up at him, his hand around her throat, she knew it. That's all Jake wanted now. The people she had killed tonight and countless other could not be helped, but if Jake could make her understand what she'd wrought upon them, even for just a moment before her demise, then it was the only solace he could take in this mission, the only compensation he could offer for his failure.

He never smiled. He never laughed at her pain. Even while his eye glowed blood red his face did not so much as twitch. That would have been too much like Alucard. Instead, he just looked down at her in disgust, like something he'd scraped off his shoe, letting her wallow in her own powerlessness, just as she had done to the victims he so desperately wanted to save.

Jake held her by her matted, greasy hair, tore the collar off her shabby, stained turtleneck and buried his jaws in her neck, moving back and forth, the way a dog might tear the meat off its kill. The blood was foul; sour and the texture was watery, but he'd endure it a thousand times if he could remind this abomination of the raw, primal fear that being undead had made it so easy to forget.

--

Corporal Braxton led the small, five-man squad toward the sound of the screaming. He'd have liked to get to the scene sooner, but given that those sounds probably meant the target was distracted, he didn't want to waste an opportunity to get the drop on it.

The ladyvamp had said that the new kid had gone toward this area to check on survivors. It was more likely he was just using that as an excuse to avoid action, as there was only a fifteen percent chance that the vamp would be in this area. No matter. Hellsing had done just fine with and without help from the same abominations it was sworn to destroy, and if the kid wimped out enough times, who knows? Integra might get wise and put him back on the chopping block where he belonged.

Twenty more yards and the screams died down to a slow gurgle. Braxton turned the corner, holding up his hand for the others to hang back until he could get a visual.

He peeked around the corner and saw a dark figure with a woman between his teeth. He gave the signal.

--

Jake dropped the dried out corpse and crushed its head underneath his heel. His rage began to cool, and before the weight of his actions could begin to settle over him, he heard a familiar _click_.

He turned his head, and saw a flash of light. The word "contact!" was shouted by a familiar voice.

He smelled something burning, and when his brain registered what had happened, he realized it was coming from quarter-sized hole in his gut. Three flashes of light, three more holes, two in his chest, one searing across his cheek, ripping it open to expose his now-razor sharp teeth.

And to think this day had started out so well.

He lost count somewhere around six, until someone finally shouted "stop!" But by then he was already on the floor, bleeding far more than he would have without his "meal." He felt sure he was dying , was almost convinced of it, but a voice kept telling him otherwise.

"Hold, on, kid!" said Mick frantically from over him, pausing to curse loudly after his third glance at his wounds, "You'll be alright, just _hold on_!"

He thought of Seras, about the one, simple thing she asked of him.

_I failed, _he thought, for the second time that night.


	15. A Question of Loyalty

A/N:My God this took forever. I'm so sorry for neglecting this story so much. A lot of original works, plus school, have distracted my attention. I hope that everyone hasn't already given up on this story. Enjoy!

The Childe of Seras

.Chapter 15: A Question of Loyalty

Corporal Braxton placed his rifle carefully on the rack in his locker. Nonetheless, he could still hear the sound of the butt lightly striking the thin metal. It wasn't that the noise was particularly loud, but rather the locker room was eerily silent.

Normally, there would be enough chatter going on in this place to match any high school sports team, but tonight it was as though all the others had taken a hasty code of silence, not so much as even so much as whispering amongst themselves. Even while he changed out of his uniform, he felt their eyes on him, like a member of the Brotherhood in an all-black cellblock.

He heard a familiar voice from behind him. It was the first words anyone had spoken to him since the mission.

"I heard Integra's still figuring out what to do with you."

Mick did not sound pleased, but Braxton felt no need to defend his actions against someone who was grandfathered into Hellsing, and especially not one that loved to pal around with the same Hell-spawned abominations he was sworn to destroy. He wasn't alone, obviously. Riley and Jackson were standing right beside him, hardly any more jovial.

"Yeah, she is." He said, without bothering to turn around.

"Well, I've got some bad news for you," began Mick, with an edge to his voice that jumped Braxton's pulse, "We can't wait that long."

Braxton whipped around, but was too late. Riley and Jackson each held an arm, pinning him to the lockers while Mick looked at him like a judge before a defendant.

"What the Hell do you want from me, Ferguson? I did what anyone would—"

He was interrupted by four knuckles loosening his jaw.

"Wrong." Mick answered, his expression unchanged, "You got jumpy. You gave the signal too quick, and now a kid who was only trying to do his job is fighting for his life!"

Braxton couldn't believe Mick would go this far. Assaulting another soldier was grounds for three months in the brig, even a court martial in some branches. He could understand if it was the lady vamp; she at least made herself useful, but why would he be willing to do this for her incompetent, bloodsucking boy toy?

"He was out of uniform! How was I supposed to—"

Mick punctuated with an uppercut, knocking Braxton's head back into the lockers so hard he was amazed he still had all his teeth. He looked around the locker room for someone, anyone whose common sense was strong enough to take his side. The room was empty by some sort of silent contract, born out of either approval or fear of Mick's anger or Riley's authority. The four of them were alone, in a room where no one but those just outside the hallway could hear them.

"You were warned" growled Mick with growing fury, "You were told he was coming. You've seen his face a thousand bloody times!"

"He was out of his sodding mind, Ferguson! If you'd have been there when I gave the signal—"

"Then I would have remembered that I've seen Seras do the same damned thing when she needed to." He finished with a punch to his solar plexus, leaving him to gasp for breath as he continued."None of this is anything new to you. Face it, Braxton: you almost killed one our own. I don't know and I don't give a flying shit why Integra hasn't strung you up outside the gates already, because we haven't even started with you yet."

When he finally caught his breath, blood dripping down his chin, he looked up at Mick, who was daring him to defend himself further.

".....He...won't die..." he said weakly, expecting another strike. When none came, he continued. "He's a vamp. They can survive almost anything. If he ain't dust by now he won't be. He'll back on his feet like all the rest. Let's just forget this happened."

Mick nodded, as if in understanding, then both Riley and Jackson slammed his head against the lockers and slugged him the gut.

Jackson's usually friendly voice became hoarse and bitter, "I guess he hasn't heard him."

"Oh, that's right," Riley said pleasantly, as though he'd forgotten, "the vent's on the other side, he couldn't have."

Mick grabbed Braxton by the hair and pulled his head up to face him.

"Maybe you should listen to what we've been hearing for the past half hour. If you don't get it then, I oughta' pump _you_ full of bullets, and forget _you _happened!"

They dragged him across the lockers, beating him every time he so much as twitched in protest. He felt Mick's hand grab the side of his head and slam it against the vent. He held it there, and Braxton suddenly understood what they wanted him to hear.

Screams.

--------------------

Seras turned off the shower and watched the last wisps of Jake's blood flow down the drain. It didn't help much. No matter how hard she scrubbed or how hot she turned the water up, the smell refused to leave.

She dried and covered herself with a long white towel, and noticed, as she always did after a shower, that her reflection was absent. She didn't mind this time; looking at herself wasn't very appealing at the moment.

She checked the clock: 1:07am. Forty-five minutes since she witnessed her fledgling, being ripped apart and hastily sewn back together, all the while with his head in her arms and whispering "I'm right here," over and over again, trying not to be as powerless over his pain as the anesthetics that couldn't work on an undead body.

Seventeen. That's how many bullets they'd tore from his body. The doctors had to use improvised silver scalpels to prevent what little regeneration still functioned from closing the incisions as soon as they were made. His left arm was barely attached, as two shots shattered the bone and ripped the flesh and tendons keeping it together. The worst part wasn't hearing him scream himself hoarse, or smelling the blood congeal against the walls, or the grotesque sight of his shredded cheek revealing all the teeth on his right side. It was watching him try to hold still, try to grit his teeth and bare it, only to give in after a few seconds, and in the brief moments where the doctors were dropping the bullets into a steel tray, look at her with expression of such consummate shame she could barely hold his glance. And then the doctor would stick his blade in and it would start all over again.

The last bullets they took out were in his lungs. They were so close to his heart that if they weren't taken out immediately, they'd have cooked it like a wad of hamburger meat.

Seras had pulled off a leg off a steel chair, stuck it between Jake's teeth, and held him down the best she could. Then that horrible noise, that shrill squeal of the surgical saw drowning out his screams as it tore through his sternum. She thanked whatever God was listening that he passed out after that, either from pain or exhaustion; if it had gone on any longer she didn't know how much more either of them could take.

She was just buttoning up her spare uniform when a familiar, unwanted chill touched the back of her neck.

"Interesting, isn't it?" began the last voice in the world she wanted to hear, "he came to us hiding monster, you gave him the body of one, and now Hellsing's finest have given him the face of one."

"It doesn't matter. He _isn't _one, no matter how much you want him to be." Her voice was bitter, devoid of affection or interest. The tone she'd used with her former master ever since she understood what he truly was, and what he wanted her to be. It was a petulant act of defiance that served no other purpose than to keep a distance between the two of them. It only worked for one of them. She did not turn to face him, but could almost hear the tightening in his cheeks, like ropes being stretched from a heavy load.

"You're right," he said, without a trace of irony, "for now. But there's something you don't understand, something you never have."

"And what's that?"

"That becoming something is making a choice." He began, like a rehearsed lecture, "I chose to be what I am, just as you did. Just as _he_ did. He made the choice once already, when his powerlessness damned his sister, to become the sort of creature that _could_ have protected her, if it only had the tools. Now that he has those tools, why would he change his mind, if given the choice once more?"

"He was only a child then!" she snapped. "Even _I _lashed out when I was young, because I was too busy hating and feeling sorry for myself to see what I was doing. He won't make the same mistake twice for the same reason I won't; we have something greater than ourselves to fight for now."

A loud chuckle bounced off the walls, coming from everywhere at once, including Seras' own mind.

"And when has that ever stopped _you_ from getting the itch? What you forget is that you're barely an infant by the standards of a Nosferatu. Time has not tested you yet." Alucard drew closer to Seras, but without really moving, as if he were leaning forward. Seras still refused to meet his glance. "Do you think I don't know how many times you've swallowed your hunger to keep the trust of every Hellsing soldier willing to overlook your superior position on the food chain? Or how counted how many times you've…slipped…?"

Silence was the signal of Alucard's triumph, and Seras wasn't about to give it to him.

"I don't live in this nightmare because I enjoy it, or because it's convenient for me," she spat, hastily putting her gloves on. "I'm here because every dead vampire ensures that at least a few other people won't have to."

Having had enough of Alucard's games, Seras opened the door, hoping that Alucard was satisfied. She should have known better.

"Then why did you make _him_ your childe?"

She stopped and went rigid. The door that stood half-open between her and the monster she'd sold her humanity to.

"The same reason I never left here. It's the only way I can live with my mistake."

---------------

Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing strode down the hallway toward the sick bay, unsure of what she would find once she arrived. When she'd heard that Rivers was awake, she put out her unfinished cigar and headed down immediately. She didn't normally visit her soldiers personally in the sick bay, but given how uncertain she was of his reaction to Braxton's friendly fire, she needed to know exactly where Rivers stood.

A pale, sweating doctor met her at the door, Dr. Briggs, if she remembered correctly. He'd spent his career patching up bullet wounds on hardened soldiers; he couldn't have been prepared to operate on a young, conscious, convulsing vampire, especially not with his master barely able to hold him down. Integra ignored him for a moment, and turned toward Rivers, who laid limply in his bed, idly staring at the ceiling with strained eyes.

"His condition is…stable," said the doctor, more to himself than to her, "but we weren't able to save his arm; it had started rotting the moment it was detached. The stitches should hold in place until his regeneration takes hold, which should be soon, with the we have feeding him. He's in so much pain…I'm amazed he isn't in shock, but I believe he'll recover within the week, maybe sooner."

Integra nodded and reached for her cigar case, but refrained. It seemed disrespectful somehow. She opened the door and walked a few feet toward his bed. Rivers tilted his head toward her, and for the first time she got a good look at him.

What she saw wasn't Jake Rivers. What lied in front of her was something that a surrealist painter would put to canvas after being locked in a room with a mad war veteran and gouging out his own eyes. He looked like a scarecrow that had been sucked into jet engine; like a prototype of Frankenstein's monster that was given up on and thrown away. The stump of his left arm extended a few inches past the shoulder, and twitched intermittently, in time with the fingers on his right hand. His body was a roadmap of stitches and staples. His chest was bisected by a split sternum scarcely wired shut. It opened just a little as he spoke, offering a small peek at the cut bone when he took a breath.

"Sir…Hellsing…"

Integra had witnessed more than her share of grotesqueries in her life, Alucard being responsible for most of them, but none of them had startled her by their sheer bizarreness as this. His voice scratched for firmness and dignity but could find only pain, having more in common with a flooded engine than the soft, wavering voice of the boy she knew. But what she would remember most was his face. Its right side was barely held together by a web of stitches starting at the corner of his mouth and branching out just underneath his eye and past his ear. The stitches stretched and squirmed with every syllable, as if something were crawling beneath them, ready to spring out at any moment. His right eye was permanently colored red, perhaps through some sort of bodily reaction to all the silver, and the left one was its usual steely green; both locked with hers and trying very hard to look like a soldier awaiting orders even in his pathetic state. Vampire or not, Integra found it hard to accept that poor abomination in front of her was still alive enough to speak and sane enough know what he said.

"Rivers…" Integra tried not to look shaken, but she knew she'd been staring.

"I…didn't think anything…could surprise you, ma'am."

His face was too frail to risk an expression, but his words carried no bitterness, just a passing observation he felt the need to almost split himself open to state. Was he calling her coldhearted, or was he trying to lighten the mood?

"I promise you, this will not go unpunished," began Integra, trying to assuage the anger she knew he had to be hiding, "You completed your mission to the letter and beyond, and for that you nearly lost your life to a comrade's carelessness. Braxton will—"

"No…" he croaked.

It sounded more like a meek request than a demand. If Integra hadn't been paying such close attention, she might not have heard it at all. He took in a wheezing breath and explained himself.

"It wouldn't do any good…" a deep breath, "…too many people have suffered tonight already, people we couldn't save…" another breath, "…and even more will once the cops start making calls…besides, it's just as much my fault as his…"

His paused to let the pain subside, leaving Integra to wonder whether she, for all her knowledge of his past, actually knew him at all. How could he, with a history of pathological violence, not be angry in the one time it would actually be justified? How could he stand up for the man who put him in a state of misery so abominable that she herself was moved? Perhaps he was afraid; unconsciously running from the rage he tried so hard to leave behind. Perhaps he was just meek, and did not want to the source of any trouble.

"What I did was selfish…and unprofessional…I couldn't save those people on the train, and because of that…I wanted the target to suffer...I let my…feelings get in the way of my mission…"

"Your mission was completed. The vampire is dead, Rivers; you don't need to nitpick over details. That's the SAS's duty, not yours."

"It was luck, that's all, Sir Integra…and when Braxton found me…it ran out. If I'd…stayed calm, he wouldn't have mistaken me…_I brought this on myself, _Sir_."_

He slowly slumped back into his bed, either finished or too exhausted to go on. His eyes hadn't shifted from hers, still waiting for her response.

Integra suppressed a sigh and said finally, "If that is what you wish, then I'll settle for a week's suspension. Whether you choose to admit or not, you've done well, Rivers. From now on, if there is anything you need, come to me."

His mismatched eyes betrayed no relief, they simply followed her as she turned to leave.

"There's only one thing I need to ask…" he said, with the last bit of strength he had left.

"What is it?"

"…never handle me with kid gloves…I'm not afraid anymore, Sir…I know what I have to do…just give me a chance to do it right."

"I will not give a moment's consideration to lowering my standards, Rivers," she said, less a threat than a sincere promise, "you have my word. Now rest, and that's an order."

He obeyed, closing his eyes and drifting to sleep almost instantly. As Integra took her leave, she lit a cigar and wondered what he would dream about. She barely noticed a concerned Walter waiting outside the door.

"How was the debriefing?"

She took a long drag of her cigar and exhaled, breathing out her musings in a puff of smoke.

"One of two things rests in that room behind us, Walter. A complete madman, or our most dedicated soldier. "

"Perhaps he is both," offered Walter, no less sober than herself.

"I certainly hope not, because if he is, then he's more dangerous than we ever thought possible."

A/N: Not particularly long compared to other chapters, but I think it stands by itself enough to be permissible. Please review and let me know the story isn't dead yet!


	16. Through New Eyes

A/N Merry Xmas everyone! I know the chapter is short, but I didn't want Christmas to come and go without giving some signs of life. Hope you enjoy!

**Chapter 16**

**Through New Eyes**

_Feb 26_

_When I was about eight, my dad tossed me against the wall so hard he knocked me out._ _I woke up a few hours later to find my arm in a cast and my sister standing right beside me, her eyes stained with dried tears, telling me 'I'm sorry" over and over, even though I keep telling her it isn't her fault. Looking back at it, I think that's when I stopped caring about the pain. All I wanted was to never see her cry again._

_Now here I am, almost ten years later. The arm my dad broke is gone, and instead of my sister, Seras is holding my hand, blood dripping silently off her face, wordlessly sending the same message with each drop: "I'm sorry."_

_I never understood it. Why apologize? What could either of them possibly have done wrong? Both had given me everything but owed me nothing, and asked for nothing in return._

_Why did they care so god damned much about me, if all it did was hurt them?_

_I can't let this go on; I can't let my mistakes destroy the memories she tried so hard to build last night, or make her forget how much they mean to me, even as I'm barely able to scribble out these words with my right hand. I need her to understand that no matter what happens, I'm not going to let this stop me or even slow me down. I want everyone: Seras, Integra, the soldiers, even Alucard, to remember this as the night I started pulling my own weight._

_Someday, when they look at my face, I want to see pride, not pity._

_----------------------------_

A book slipped out of Jake's hand: _The FBI Handbook,_ 1357 pages, read in seven hours and fifty-three minutes. It fell into a pile of others beside his bed in the sick bay, with the titles such as _The Art of War_ and _Mixed Unit Tactics_ on top. He'd already gone through every file Hellsing had available, from old combat reports to schematics of the Manor, so he decided to this was the next logical step in educating himself. His wounds might have felt like bleach had been poured into them, but he'd be damned if was going to waste another second of his time staring at the ceiling.

The activity of the undead had increased exponentially over the past two decades, even preceding the discovery of the FREAK chip. Jake recalled a few of the statistics he'd read in Hellsing's records:

The estimated percentage of missing persons related to vampires had grew from 11% to 39% in the last ten years alone. The average probability of being killed or abducted after dusk had gone from a negligible .015% to .18%.

The situation had reached a point where simply going out at night had practically become a game of Russian roulette, and yet, the tactics left over from the Arthur Hellsing's administration fifty years ago—conceal, contain, search, and destroy—hadn't changed at all, even after the increase in manpower when Integra began her reign. This was all very new to Jake, but he couldn't escape the feeling that something didn't add up.

Jake's studies were interrupted by a cold tingle in the back of his head, as if a spider made of ice was crawling in his skull. His eyes narrowed, his red eye gleaming in the dark like a cat's.

"I was wondering when you'd show up," he said, with neither contempt nor excitement.

A black, oily mist crept along the floor, pulling itself upward into a vague shape of a man sitting in the chair that Seras had once occupied. It melted off of the figure like dust washed from a statue, revealing the last face Jake wanted to see.

"I hear," began Alucard, "that you absolved the man responsible for your…condition. Have you grown that fond of your new look?"

He sat with his hands folded in his lap, patiently waiting for an answer as if they were old friends. Jake's face had mostly healed, aside from the complex web of scars left behind, but his expression remained unreadable.

"Punishing him wouldn't benefit anyone, least of all me," said Jake. His voice had recovered in the last few days, and thankfully didn't sound like he was choking on hot asphalt.

"Of course…" the vampire's voice held that elegant sarcasm that was his signature. "So tell me, what was it like?"

Jake didn't even sit up in his bed. "It hurt," he said flatly, "should I write a haiku?"

"You know what it is I'm referring to, childe, don't be coy."

Jake said nothing for a long moment, then stood straight up in his hospital bed, staring the No Life King straight in the eye.

"After I ran away from Catholic School, I lived on the streets of LA for six months. I met this guy once, his wrists were as thin than the legs of the chair you're sitting on. He discovered heroin when he was twelve, and every day since then he'd spend strung out on an old mattress in an alleyway off 21st street. His entire life was about what he had to do to get another hit. He blew guys at bus stations, broke into cars to pawn off their radios, and when that wasn't enough, started mugging people. He killed one or two before he was caught. By the time the cops arrested him, he was so cooked he couldn't even tell them his own name. Anytime I ever got curious about drugs, all I had to do was remember him."

"And what does that have to do with your feeding off that vampire in the tunnels?" asked Alucard, sounding more curious than impatient.

Jake's eye looked like a red crosshair as it leveled on Alucard. "Because now, all I have to do is look at you. Take away your guns, your fancy outfit and your cute smile, and that's all you are: a junkie, living out of a needle and a spoon, too lost in the high to give a shit about what a degenerate parasite he is. But at least when a junkie sits on his ass, other people don't suffer and die because of it."

"You make it sound as if I'm somehow responsible for that vampire's victims."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, _Al_, but I'm pretty sure you were the one who chased it into the subway. That was, of course, _after_ your negligence lead to it getting out of your sights in the first place."

"Negligence?" said Alucard, as if he'd never heard the term before.

"I hope that's what it was, because I hate to think that you let it go on purpose."

Alucard's eyes made a mocking plea for vindication. "And why would I do that?"

"You don't get a lot of chances to have fun anymore, do you Al? Since Seras earned her rank, you've had to settle for the leftovers, so why not drag it out a little more, just to keep things interesting? Don't want to go home blue-balled and empty handed, right?"

"You assume much about me, boy." Alucard stood up, hold his hands open in front of him, "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it seems that you are under the misconception that my place as your teacher has ended merely because I've been ordered not to harm you."

The light disappeared from the room. The walls pulsed and breathed. The symbols on the backs of Alucard's hands began to glow. His clothes melted and twisted, morphing into some strange straight-jacket that somehow seemed more becoming of him than the ridiculous red outfit he normally wore. A thousand red eyes opened along the walls, on his body, and his arm began to swell until it took the shape of a dog's head. A tremendous pair of jaws ripped along what used to be his wrist and let out an obscene howl that sounded like broken accordion and a strangled infant.

Jake never broke his gaze.

"You know," he said, his voice unchanged, "A week ago, your little pet tricks might have actually gotten a rise out of me. But you're looking at a different man."

"A different _man_?" asked Alucard as the "dog" that was once his arm snarled at Jake. His head tilted to the side, contemplated Jake's choice of words, then said, "how has this pitiful state you are in enlightened you so?"

"Forty-two died on that train, dozens more outside it. They all lived their lives knowing that one day they would, that's the rule they lived by. You live for a while, then you die, and whatever happens to your soul, your spirit, whatever you want to call it, will happen and there's nothing you can do to stop it. By taking Seras' gift, I broke that rule, for no other reason except I was afraid to die, thinking it was some kind of second chance, but when it almost caught up to me in that tunnel, I realized something: when I die—and someday, I will—I'll just be returning what I owe. But until that happens, I plan on doing something worthwhile with the power I sold my soul to have."

"And what's that?"

"Protecting those who aren't as lucky as you, Seras, and I. So, if you're not going to do anything with your parlor tricks except posture to me, kindly fuck off back to your pine box. I've got work to do."

Alucard regarded Jake for a while, reading his straight, stony face with all the scrutiny of an art critic.

Then he started laughing.

It was only a light chuckle at first. It swelled and crawled slowly up his throat, like vomit stewing in his gut that he had to let out or he'd go mad holding it in. His head tilted back on the rotten stalk of bone and gristle that was his spine and his mouth exploded into a mindless choir of hyenas and little girls. It was a laugh that could kill a child in its mother's womb, an ending to a bedtime story in Hell, a disease that Jake would never, ever, allow to touch him.

Soon the eyes and the breathing sounds were gone, followed swiftly by Alucard himself, in what order Jake wasn't entirely sure. As he lied back against sterile hospital bed he promised himself that he would do everything in his power to destroy the depravity he'd just witnessed. Even if it took him a thousand years, one night, he would surpass the No Life King.

And on that night, he'd personally take him back to the hole Integra found him in, lock the door, and make sure that a monster like him never walked the earth again.

--------------

A/N Reviews are a must, especially now since I'm beginning to hone my skills. Anything at all, flames, praise, criticisms, nitpicks, are all welcome. Merry Xmas everyone!


	17. The Smallest Player

A/N I think I've decided that the best idea for continuing this story is to release smaller, but more frequent updates. This makes things more manageable for me and less frustrating to you (I hope).

Chapter 17

The Smallest Player

Corporal Braxton walked out of the locker room for the first time in a week. It had taken almost that long to convince his wife that he'd gotten jumped on the way back from work and that he was on sick leave all that time. He'd always hated having to keep his job from her, but how else could he have explained it? Even if she was in the know, the story written in his bruised and swollen face was too strange for even him to completely understand. Even now as he was flanked by Hellsing's art collection in the main hall, he still wasn't sure how he felt about it.

Most of the other soldiers hadn't given him too much flak over the incident so far. He still hadn't seen Mick, Reilly, or Jackson, though it didn't take much imagination to figure out their feelings on the matter. Then there was the Seras' kid himself.

When Braxton had asked about him, all he got were shrugs. None of them, except the three responsible for his lost molar, had even seen him. He had made the mistake of approaching Victoria on the way in, who answered his question with a stare that promised murder if he so much as coughed in her direction. All he gathered was that he'd been released from the sick bay two days earlier.

About two hours into his investigation, Braxton gave up and elected join the others at the range. His best grouping was five inches, especially poor considering he was one of the best shots in his squad. He blamed on his eye, which was still bruised and sore from all the fluorescent lighting in the range.

Then, on the last hour of his "shift," he ran into the kid in the hallway. Braxton froze, unsure if he recognized him. He was walking close to the wall to Braxton's left as he turned the corner toward the sub basement, staring straight ahead, no longer with the darting uncertainty was once his signature, but with a determined focus more becoming of a chess player than the awkward kid he had known. Crooked in his arm was a stack of books whose titles Braxton couldn't make out, and before he had the chance to try he realized that the kid had stopped and turned to face him.

"Do you need one of these?" he asked, his voice serious yet strangely calm, not unfriendly but not warm, either, like two pressed sheets of paper being slid against each other; the voice of a professional.

Braxton looked up and saw the fruit of his actions in the light of the hallway. The scars, beginning at the right corner of his mouth, branched out like a leafless tree whose trunk formed a slight, passive scowl on his face. When paired with the determination in his eyes—one that seemed to be permanently discolored—he looked as though he was always searching for something he couldn't quite pin down.

Scars on a vampire? He'd seen the big one, Alucard, get blown into hamburger meat and stick himself back together with nary a scratch to remember it by. Then again, Victoria still had that scar from the number Anderson did on her, so maybe he was an exception. Braxton recalled the ten minutes of concentrated agony he'd heard through the vents at the behest of his compatriots. Sure, he was healed and on his feet, just like he'd predicted, but could any amount of healing take those minutes back?

"The library has copies if you need them," he said, betraying no impatience.

Braxton suddenly felt like a Nazi standing before a Holocaust survivor. This boy, who wasn't even old enough for the army, had been through as much pain as any war veteran he had ever known, and here he was, staring at the cause of it all, asking him if he needed any books.

"Nah, I'm…fine," Braxton answered slowly, broken from his trance. He was in the middle of deciding whether to apologize or do an about face when the kid saved him the trouble of doing either.

"You can stop worrying, Corporal," said Rivers.

He almost, in a fit of mindlessness, said "about what," but he knew full well that under any sensible circumstance, it would have cost him a few more teeth. So he just stared dumbly and waited for him to continue.

"What's done is done. I don't like holding grudges or stirring bad blood. Hellsing has enough on its plate already, and the last thing I want to be is the center of any more problems. What Mick and the others did to you was out of line, and I've told them so. We're all here for the same reason,"

He kneeled for a moment, carefully tilting his books sideways in his hand to set the down on the ground. He stood back up on held out his right hand.

"And I'm not ready to let one honest mistake make me forget that, are you?"

Braxton took another look at his hands, and noticed, for the first time, that one of them was missing, cut off almost at the shoulder. He looked back up at his eyes, waiting patiently, almost hopefully, for his response.

"No." he answered finally, "I'm not."

Braxton took the vampire's hand and shook it once. He smiled slightly through his scar, and Braxton responded in kind, albeit less surely. He took the stack of books to his arm again and said, "I'll be seeing you in the field, Corporal. Hopefully, in uniform."

Braxton nodded and watched him disappear through secret compartment behind the portrait of Queen Elizabeth. The painting slid shut and the most peculiar feeling hit Braxton, some sort of impact left behind by the presence of the young vampire. It was not the kind that followed meeting someone important, like the Queen or the Prime Minister, nor was it the kind that preceded the meeting of someone of such note. It was a nameless, fleeting certainty that—whether his actions played a part or not—he'd crossed paths with someone who would one day be the Queen or the Prime Minister; perhaps something even more. The kind that had him imagining himself as an old, retired veteran, telling his grandchildren what occurred on this night.

And then, as Braxton headed back to the locker room to begin his trek home, it passed, not even staying long enough for him to remember it. His wife was cooking brisket tonight, and he wasn't missing it for the world.

--------------

A/N I know it was short, but any and all input is very much appreciated. You've probably noticed a slight change in the style of narrative in the last two or three chapters, and I'd like your opinions on how it's working. Thanks for reading all! And don't forget to review!


	18. For Appearance's Sake

Chapter 18:

For Appearance's Sake

A/N Whoa that update came a lot faster than I expected. This is officially the longest journal entry in the story, so I hope it doesn't get too long-winded. Enjoy, read, review, dance, schmooze, and go home happy.

_March 12_

_Walter handed me a bit of a care package today: a set of contact lenses that match the color of my left eye, and some sort of make-up to cover my scars. He said it would help me blend in a little more when I'm out on the field. He told me that back when he was doing field work, he sometimes had to go undercover, and after a while he became something of an expert when it came to disguises. I wasn't sure if he'd thought of this himself or if Integra had asked him to do it, and I didn't know how to ask without sounding ungrateful or offended, so I let it be. _

_I had some free time tonight, so I decided to try them on. It wasn't until I looked in the mirror, at my old face, my old self, that I asked, "How did this happen?"_

_Less than a year ago, I was illegal immigrant who played the guitar with his friends in exchange for a cot to sleep on and a meal plan of burgers and milkshakes. Before that, I was a homeless teenager, eating out of trash cans, sleepwalking through life until one friendly Brit decided to give me a chance._

_I guess when I think about it, my life's been a long serious of freak chances; some good, some bad. I barely survived that car crash that killed my sister and father, but found myself a ward of the state at St. Francis' Catholic School. After I ran away when I was fifteen, I'd have probably ended up on the streets a lot longer if I hadn't run into Frank, who just happened to be visiting relatives in the states._

_He was playing his acoustic guitar on the stoop of his uncle's house, his eyes half closed, like he was asleep. Ceil used to play one just like it. It was old and in horrible shape, but somehow she made it sound brand new. She'd play when she'd take me to the park or the beach, and when she sang it was almost a whisper, like a secret told only to me. After she died, I couldn't listen any more. Every time I heard music, no matter what the genre or the instrument, I'd get as far away as I could, cover my ears, and wait for it to stop. Even the choir in Catholic School made me uneasy, and I often got the strap for trying to cut that class. Looking back, I think that's why I ran away. The teachers were strict, but not cruel. The other kids avoided me, but no one ever bullied me. The schoolwork was dogmatic, but not fire and brimstone. I just couldn't get up every morning, hear the choir practice, and think of how much better it would sound if Ceil were singing it._

_But the way Frank played, it was so humble, so unassuming, so close in spirit to the music that defined who she was, that for just a minute, I could pretend that she was somehow still playing, still singing to me; I just wasn't listening hard enough._

_Frank caught me staring and asked if I wanted to give it a try. I was too surprised to do anything but stare at him, but he kept looking right back at me, expectantly, as if we knew each other and did this all the time. I did what I normally did back then, stuttered out a few barely audible apologies and turned to leave, but he caught my sleeve and said in the most friendly voice possible: "When you've killed me dad, fucked me mum, and stolen me wallet, _then_ you can say you're sorry. But for now, I'll settle for a yes or a no." I was actually scared of him that point. I was a thin, scrawny fifteen-year-old street kid in front of an almost-twenty guy with about a dozen piercings and biceps the size of honeydew melons. I didn't live the way I did without knowing what kinds of people to avoid, but Frank just confused me. He was barely holding on to my sleeve so that if I wanted to get away, I could. His dyed red hair and piercings gave him a distinctly punkish look, but he was playing an acoustic guitar. He didn't even know me, but he was already assuming I knew how to play. He was quite possibly the weirdest guy I'd ever met, and from someone who lived on the streets, that means a lot._

"_El speako le English, cotton top?" he'd said with an accent so incredibly fake I would have laughed if I wasn't so nervous._

"_I don't know anything about music…" I'd said back, looking down. Frank gave me an incredulous look, as if to say "do you think I'm stupid?"_

"_Can't lie too well, can you?" he'd said slyly, letting go of my sleeve, "Be thankful for that. Get too good at it and you'll end up pulling the wool over your _own_ eyes."_

_I don't think I could have left him even if I wanted to at that point. It wasn't just that he saw right through me. Something about his words made him impossible to walk away from, like he was telling me a story piece by piece, and I wanted to know the end of it._

"_See, I can tell you know a little, because of where your eyes go when you watch someone play. Most people look at the eyes first, like they're trying to see where the music's comin' from. Sooner or later, they start looking down to the fingers, and try to see how it's being made. But you didn't look at neither. You just listened, and let it take you wherever it wanted to. That's the _point_, and just by looking at you, I can tell you get it. Even if you've never played a note in your life, that alone makes you closer to Beethoven than your half the music majors in Oxford. So, I'm going to ask you one more time, cotton top, do you want to give it a try?"_

_I nodded shyly, and he hung his guitar over my shoulders like my sister had done so many times before when used to give me lessons, and said: "My plane leave in two weeks. Come back here in one, and we'll see what you can do."_

_When he closed the door, and I felt that guitar in my hands, I felt as if I was being reborn. I'd never known what it was like to live with a purpose, to have anything to work towards or hope for, and a complete stranger from another country had seen fit to give me both. Maybe it was charity, maybe it was curiosity, but after a while I wasn't worried which it was. For the first time, I knew who I was: a musician. Nothing more, nothing less. _

_After almost an hour of staring into the mirror, I wipe off the make-up and take out the lens. What I used to be is gone, replaced by what I am now: a vampire, a scarred, maimed, inhuman monster made to give children nightmares, whose only saving grace is his decision not to act the part and stand against those who do. A soldier, fighting a war as old as the land I stand on. It's true that I've lost a lot of things to get here: my friends, my family, my arm, even—in some ways at least—my humanity. But I've gained a greater purpose than I ever imagined possible. I write this now not to lament for the loss of those good old times, but as a way of saying goodbye to them, of laying them to rest. I can't forget where I came from or how I got to be where I am, but I have to accept that I can never be the fearful drifter or the modest musician again. My duty demands that I be something more. The jury's still out on whether or not I'm prepared for it, but no matter what devils stand in my way, within or without, I will never turn away from the path I've chosen._

_Even if the undead are an enemy that can never be destroyed completely, it can still bleed, and as long as I'm standing, I'll make sure it never stops._

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A/N Thank all of you loyal readers for staying with me. Any reviews, good, bad, meh, whatever suits your fancy, are all very much appreciated.


	19. In the Know

A/N Hello again, friends. This chapter's a good bit longer than I expected it would be, but somehow it still managed to end up as a teaser. I hope it'll pique your interest in my plans for later, because I feel like I've been denying your hunger for a bit of action. More to come, and soon!

Disclaimer (or as I like to call it, the magical anti-lawsuit words): I don't own Hellsing (write in salt for added protection)

Chapter 19

"In The Know"

Integra took another sip of Ceylon tea and glared at the mountain of black and white on her desk. The bloody mess in the tube those few weeks ago had half of the Protestant Knights coming down on her; it wasn't easy to falsify over a hundred autopsy reports overnight and they wanted to make sure she knew it. Sir Islands even had the nerve to say in a personal letter: "For all his faults, your father always knew to handle such matters with a delicate touch, and if you don't want a mass hysteria on your hands, I would suggest following his example."

If there was one fault Integra begrudged her father for, it was gaining the unflinching loyalty of a man who could be just as fastidious as he was smug. Islands had been on her back from the moment she took charge of Hellsing, constantly harping even to this day that she was too young and inexperienced for such important work, but Integra was no fool. His true contention was revealed every time he glanced at Alucard or even Seras, with a mixture of contempt and apprehension that at times made Integra wonder if there was more history there than Islands let on. Now that she thought about it, it had been so long since she'd last seen him face to face that he probably didn't know about Rivers. She thought of the look on his withered, skeptical face when he found out that she hadn't just taken on a new vampire, but a foreigner, a yankee at that, and almost smiled.

Almost.

"Sir Integra," said Walter, "we have a call from Mr. Hawkins on line one. Shall I tell him you're occupied?"

It wasn't often that Integra even heard the name of the Foundation's head, and incredibly rare that she hear from him directly. He'd assisted Hellsing in intelligence gathering on a few occasions, but apart from that his outfit communicated little with hers, and even less with others. All Integra knew about The Foundation was that its Research and Development Department was funneled more money in a month than Hellsing's total budget could match in a year, so for what they lacked in supernatural muscle, they made up for with hunting tech so advanced that a mere three men could take on a target and still have the ammo to mop up the ghouls afterwards.

"No."

Integra took the phone and pressed it to her ear. There was a three second pause, and just when Integra was about to check and see if he'd hung up, he spoke with the deep, smooth ease of a jazz singer.

"Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing…" he said. Something about the length of her full name clearly amused him, as he always said it as though he were reciting the name of a favorite song.

"Mr. Hawkins," She answered, less as a greeting and more as confirmation.

"I hope you'll forgive the late call; I always forget the time difference." There was a barely audible sip from the other end; he was probably drinking coffee. It was nothing unusual. He seemed to treat everything like it was a leisurely affair, speaking with a lack of urgency that was almost as frustrating as Maxwell's insufferable arrogance. Nonetheless, it was always a little refreshing to speak with him once in a while. True, his friendliness only made her more suspicious of him, but at least he didn't feel obligated to insult her church or call her sow with every communiqué.

"Quite alright, Mr. Hawkins," Integra replied in an all-business voice he'd have to be dead to ignore, "but what interrupts your business that you must speak with me?"

"Straight to the point as always, I see," he said, vaguely disappointed. He took another sip, paused a moment, and continued, "Ever heard of a man named Bill Steinman?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Until three months ago, I hadn't, either." He admitted, swallowing a barely audible gulp of coffee, "He's one of America's richest and most elusive men, a shadow player in the Los Angeles white-collar scene. His revenue stream was so far off the books the FBI found him almost by mistake. After a bit of digging, they found a few of the sources: drugs, racketeering, the works. They hadn't found the main source of his monthly truckloads of cash yet, but in less than a two weeks, they'd collected enough evidence with the rest to nail him with a life sentence."

"And?" urged Integra, her patience thinning.

"The FBI shadowed the guy for one more week, just to see if they could pin anything else on him, and they struck gold: human trafficking. We're talking imports _and_ exports, to and from dozens of third world countries, and, interestingly enough, a good chunk of them right here in Land of the Free. Weird thing is, every year, about a third of Steinman's livestock just falls of the map. Not sold into to prostitution or slavery, not used in kiddy porn or snuff films, they just disappear without so much as a fingernail to go on."

"Are you saying his clients were—"

"Bingo," he said coolly, "Steinman's been running the bloodsucker's buffet all over west coast for the last decade now. We've estimated he supplies around one fifth of all the vampires in L.A and Mexico City alone, not to mention the smaller-scale operations he's got dotting the landscape."

"I would congratulate you on your find, Mr. Hawkins, but I fail to see what this has to do with me or my organization."

"Ah, now here's where things get interesting," he began, as if he'd been waiting for her interruption from the start, "We're not sure how, but Steinman got wind that we were tailing him and decided to cut his losses. He had his assets moved outside our jurisdiction in less than forty-eight hours, which has got to be some kind of record, and would you care to guess where he's shopping for business partners right now?"

"That doesn't make sense, why would he flee from you only to run to us?"

"Britian is the worlds' hotspot for FREAK activity. There isn't a vampire or a business partner of one that doesn't know that. Sure, you've got some heavy muscle to flex, but if the metro incident showed Steinman anything, it's that you're spread awfully thin. He must have figured he had a better chance with you so distracted with the fakes, so that if he did business with the real deal only, he'd be less likely to find himself strapped to a table loaded with electrodes. You know, I'm actually starting to pity the poor bastard."

Integra could almost hear him grin over the phone. She'd never met him in person, but she'd a picture of him once: a wide, forty-something chocolate brown man in a grey business suit, almost tall enough to see eye to eye with Alucard. He had huge, thick hands, big enough to pick up a small child by its head, and the whitest, friendliest smile she'd ever seen. It glimmered like waxed china against his skin. Not exactly the visage of a hunter, but he was too tall and imposing to be a politician or a CEO and too polished to be bouncer or a police officer.

"So, might I assume that your wish is that I 'take care' of this man for you?"

Integra's instinct to protect her country was strong, but not so much that she missed the angles. Hawkins was dangling all this in front of her nose a little too vigorously. There was something he was leaving out, something important. But for now, Integra simply wanted to know the point of all this.

"Not quite," he said carefully, "Steinman's too valuable to just get rid of. We need him alive, so we can find out for sure who his clients back home are. If my instincts are right, and usually they are, you and I both stand a good chance of striking a nasty blow the undead population in our respective countries, maybe even uncover a clan or two. So let's get down to brass tacks, because I know you're a very busy lady: we give you all the info we've got on him and the locations of his prospective late-night cafes, you nab him up, then turn him over to us."

"Hold on, the British Isles are out of your jurisdiction. How do you already know the locations he's scouting? "

"If someone this valuable left _your_ borders, would you let that stop you from keeping an eye on him? He's been playing it quiet since he got here two weeks ago, only popping his head up where it needs to be. I've got a few of my agents tailing him; we wanted to wait until he started getting comfortable before we informed you."

Integra's grip on the phone tightened. He'd just told her what he'd been leaving out. "You knew he was here, and you waited this long to tell us?"

"If I hadn't, would you have waited to move in?" he asked, in an oddly non-defensive father-knows-best tone of voice, "It's better for both of us that I did. He's just now getting his contacts together. In a few more days he'll start taking clients, and those clans you've been trying to flush out since before the FREAK chips hit the scene will come a' running like their mommas rang the dinner bell. You don't kill the golden goose until it stops laying eggs."

As much as Integra hated being kept in the dark, she had to admit Hawkins had a point. It would have been wasteful to go in so prematurely, as she likely would have done in an attempt quickly return her attention to the FREAKS. A few more would die this way as Steinman's free samples, but at least she stood a better chance of striking a serious blow to Hellsing's traditional enemy.

"So what are you proposing?"

"We wait until Steinman gets a few higher-class clients, then crash his next business meeting. I provide the intelligence, you provide the muscle, everybody wins."

"You do realize that I will need to interrogate him first?"

"You can put a bonnet on his head have a tea party with him for all I care. So long as he's in my hands at the end of the day, your end of the bargain is met. So, do we have a deal, Sir Hellsing?"

Integra paused. She couldn't figure out any reason Hawkins would be holding out on her at this point. This was her country, her jurisdiction; she held all the cards, or so it seemed. If she sensed any double-dealing, she could always hold Steinman at the manor.

"Yes. We do."

He chuckled in satisfaction. "Excellent. I'll notify you the moment I see any clan heads pop up. You should prepare yourself for a scuffle. Steinman might be a pushover, but his clients won't be."

Integra smiled for the first time that day. "I would think that you of all people would know just how prepared we are, Mr. Hawkins. Our 'special forces' are ready to act on a moment's notice."

"Oh yes…about that…" he began, "I'd almost forgotten to ask: how's our boy fitting in?"

Hawkins' curiosity seeped through the phone. Integra's eyes narrowed. "Better than what was expected." She answered blandly, hoping it was enough.

"I'm sure he is…" he said knowingly, "You know, Steinman started getting into the catering business about a two years before the kid's sister got herself eaten. Had a small establishment set up just fifty miles away from where they were ducked out in Northern California. There's a good chance he might be able to tell us what clan the vamp that popped her cork came from. You ought to let him know. I'm sure it'll give some…extra incentive."

"Rivers will carry out this mission for the sake of his duty." Her voice was cold and precise, a voice normally reserved when giving orders in the field or reprimanding Alucard. "I'll not allow any personal vendettas to endanger the mission or my men's lives."

Hawkins' end of the line went silent for so long that for a moment Integra had thought he'd hung up, but suddenly he spoke, as though he were reading his words off a tomb stone.

"You haven't told him, have you?"

Integra reached for the lit cigar she'd been neglecting in the ash tray since she picked up the phone. It was almost finished already, but she salvaged a last puff and spilt a tuft of ash over Hellsing's emblem on the combat report she'd been reading. Integra barely noticed.

"Rivers left Deep Ground eight years ago. Releasing him prematurely was your mistake, not mine. What he knows is no longer your concern, and so long as he continues to serve Hellsing adequately, it is of no concern to me, either."

"Of course, Sir Hellsing," Hawkins said, his amicable jazz singer voice returned in full swing, "I've already faxed you the intelligence reports I promised. We'll be speaking again soon, so be ready."

"You can be sure of that, Mr. Hawkins."

The off button ended the talk with an oblivious chirp and Integra handed the phone back to Walter. He stood as straight and poised, waiting to hear the next step toward this new mission.

"Walter," she sighed, unknowingly pushing the away the ashes that stained her coat of arms gray, "Cigar."

Integra dismissed Walter and headed to her quarters for bed. The gray smear remained, seen by none, and felt by all.

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A/N Please please please review! I'd like to know how well the suspense is working, as well as everything else. Telling me what works and what doesn't work is the greatest favor you can do for me. Thanks all for reading!


	20. Acceptance

A/N: Sorry for the long wait everyone. Between Left 4 Dead and school my time management hasn't been great. I hope I made this chapter worth the long wait.

Disclaimer: I don't own Hellsing. There. I said it.

Chapter 20

Acceptance

Seras stepped out of her room and shut the door behind her. Her fledgling was in the gym, waiting for their sparring match to begin, and she was already late by nearly ten minutes. She'd wanted to wait a few more days, but when word got out that a particularly important raid was in the works, he'd insisted that they both needed to be as prepared as possible.

Jake had spent almost the entire three weeks since his dismissal from the sick bay alone, pouring obsessively over books and files as if they provided greater nourishment than blood. He never refused her company, but it was obvious, in the way his eyes darted back and forth between her and the plateau of books on his desks what he'd rather be doing. She wasn't entirely sure that he'd slept at all until the first two weeks, when he'd started to slow down, and that was only after he'd run out of unclassified files and was denied further access. And then there was that unreadable stare he'd adopted. Seras noticed it the most when he told her not to begrudge Braxton for what had happened. She was so shocked by his request that at first she refused to let the matter go so easily. He'd listened to her then just as intently as he always had, and spoke with no less sincerity, but his face seldom moved past what it took to form the words, and his voice, while not monotonous or flat, was drained of the youthful excitability that once mixed so well with its innate shyness. Had his scars distorted his face some subtle way, making the meek but endearing face she'd come to know impossible, or was he so hardened by what Braxton had done that he couldn't be moved to expression so easily anymore?

Or was it that he was so ashamed by the state of helplessness that Seras had witnessed him in, that he'd become afraid to show any emotion at all?

It wasn't his scars or the loss of his arm that Seras hated Braxton the most for; it was that she still didn't know the answer to that question. And that was why, until she did, she still couldn't forgive him for giving that order, or herself for letting him go alone.

It wasn't until that night three weeks ago that Seras realized how close she was to Jake. Her fear for his life was so strong that it stopped being an emotion entirely; it had become an instinct, as basic and primal as survival itself. Was that the way mothers felt for their children; feeling as if a piece of themselves was running around outside of them, in constant fear of it getting hurt, lost, or left behind? She'd once wondered if it had anything to do with the supposed spiritual bond between fledglings and their sires, but now she couldn't have cared less. All she knew was that there wasn't anything she wouldn't do to make sure he never suffered like that again.

Seras opened the double-doors to the gym. Jake must have heard her coming, because he was just walking onto the mat when she arrived and looked in her direction expectantly. He was dressed in the same grey sweats and thick white socks that she was, standing up a bit straighter than usual.

"Good night, Seras," he said softly, the phrase having lost its irony months ago.

"'Evening," she replied, taking her place on the mat. "'Been a while, hasn't it?"

"Too long," he said. "I hope all that reading hasn't dulled my reflexes." If her enthusiasm sounded false to him, he made no move to show it. There was a subtle anticipation in his eyes that was no small comfort to Seras: he was looking forward to this, and he wanted her to know it. It gave her hope that he wasn't actually hiding his emotions, he just expressed them in ways that were more subtle, using his eyes instead of his face.

Then she remembered what they were about to do.

The stump of his left arm barely showed through the short sleeve of his shirt, a reminder of why Seras had been putting this off for so long. As obvious it was, she'd been dancing around the issue for days, enabled somewhat by his daily raids of the library, but mostly by the fact that Jake never brought it up. After one day, he'd learned to dress himself one-armed, and if the bite marks on the slider of his pistol were any indication, he was already re-familiarizing himself with his weapons. At this point, if she hadn't known him before, she'd have guess he'd been without an arm all his life. But in CQC, there was no way to compensate: Jake's disadvantage was so crippling it very nearly rendered him defenseless if a vampire of equal skill got too close.

And here she was, about show him in fine detail just how much he'd lost.

Jake settled into a sideways stance, his arm out in front of him. Seras mirrored him.

"Ready?" she said nervously.

"Yes."

Jake's mismatched eyes fixed themselves on hers, trying read her intent. He went for her wrist and Seras easily batted it away. He faked to the left once and Seras sidestepped as he tried to dive in close and throw his full weight at her. He moved a little faster than she expected and his shoulder brushed against her chest. She took his shoulder and shoved him back. He feinted back, held his footing, and his arm flew at her neck like a coiled snake—either a mistake or an effort to make it seem that way. His motion was quick even to her eyes, but it was too easy to guard, and without another arm to press the attack, he was left defenseless. Again, Seras shoved him back, not taking the chance to throw him just yet. Their eyes still hadn't broken contact, and his narrowed slightly, frustrated. It was almost impossible to be surprised when more than half of the moves she taught him were rendered useless, and if Seras read him right, he was beginning to realize that himself. The best he could hope for was an over-the-shoulder throw, and without his other hand to restrain hers, even that wasn't likely.

Still, he wouldn't stop. In fact, the more times his efforts were foiled, he harder he pushed forward, as though he hoped to wear her down through sheer tenacity. The worst part was that, for his disadvantages, he'd improved in every other way: he was much faster, didn't hesitate, his face never revealed his intent, and most notably, he never froze awkwardly when their bodies touched. If not for his handicap, this could very well have been the first day he threw her.

Seras couldn't go on like this, it just wasn't fair. After his next attempt at a grab, she took his wrist and flipped him onto the ground.

He lay sprawled on the floor on his back, staring at the ceiling with the face of a death row inmate whose appeals had run out. Not afraid, not accepting, just stretched so thin between anger and hopelessness that there was no way to show either.

"Jake…" she began meekly, "I think…I think that's enough for—"

"Am I charity case?"

Seras blinked. "What?"

"Am I only here because you don't know what else to do with me?"

"Of course not!" she said in disbelief, "Why would you even think that?"

"The first thing you taught me was 'don't hold back,'" his face was as still as it had been from the start, but his voice raised a little more with each word, and there was barely audible shakiness to it, one that Seras hadn't heard in weeks. "At the time I didn't know how important that was, because I didn't understand what's at stake."

He picked himself up and stared her straight in the eye, just as he had when they were sparring.

"On the train I found out what happens when just one of us screws the pooch: people die. The morgue's holding one-hundred and twenty-seven body bags filled with our mistakes, and they could have easily been mine. And now that I finally understand why I can't afford to hesitate, now that I'm ready to do whatever it takes keep my best friend's home from falling to the tenth level of Hell, the one person I need to show me how is holding back on _me!?_"

"What are you talking about? You never even got through my defenses!"

"And until you felt like it, you didn't get through mine," he said coldly. "You and I both know you could have thrown me five times over just then, and just a few weeks ago, you would have. But now you're stopping short, going easy, like I'm some kind of glass statue you're scared of breaking!"

Jake's right eye glowed brighter as his voice rose, like a wielder's torch slowly burning through steel, transforming his once-calm face had twisted into an outraged scowl.

"You can't be expected to keep up with our normal pace; for god's sake, look at yourself!" she shouted, "You're lucky to be alive after what—"

"Yeah, lucky," he spat, "That's all I ever am, isn't it? I was lucky at the Typical Freak club the night you turned me, and in the car crash that killed my sister! The world keeps falling around my ears and somehow, someway, I always crawl out of the corpses like a god damned maggot!"

His last words echoed briefly through the thankfully empty gym, and he turned away from Seras with a heated sigh through his clenched teeth, as if to protect her from any further outburst. Jake took a seat on the bench with a hand combed through his hair, his back to her still, Seras could only stare in shock as she understood what was happening. She had thought for so long that his memories would be what brought this side of him back to the surface, but here he was, completely unaware of his past, yet still returning back to the same cycle of guilt and self-hatred that had made them so unbearable.

"My survival has never amounted to anything except that," he said quietly, "I kept asking for this spar because I hoped that could change, that maybe my life could count for something besides just staying alive. But no matter how many books I read or how many guns I have, I can't do this alone."

Seras approached him carefully, unsure of what to say.

"Jake…"

She trailed off as he turned to her, silenced by a face she hadn't seen since the tape of Dr. Harding's first session.

"I need you, Seras," he pleaded, "Now more than ever. If you ever lose faith in me, please, don't let it be over this."

In one moment, everything that bound them together, as master and fledgling, as friends and comrades, was tested. Seras had the power to break him completely or inspire him, and the reality of that struck her with more force than Alucard's bullet ten years ago. She had to be there for him the way his sister couldn't be, to pull him out of this cycle he was trapped in, or else the nightmare he'd worked so hard to escape from would start all over again, with or without his memories.

"I haven't lost anything in you." She said, carefully taking a seat beside him, "but if you want me to help you, you need to understand that this war we're fighting is much older than us. No one person can end it: not me, not Integra, not even Alucard, if it ever does, it won't be in one great battle. People are going to get hurt whether we have control over it or we don't."

"But we _did_ have control!" he protested, "We only lost it because—"

"Whether Alucard was being lazy or self indulgent is for Integra to worry about, not us," said Seras, with a subtle strength in her voice as she put her hands on his shoulders so that they faced one another. "If you spend the rest of your life blaming yourself for what you can't do, the only vampire you'll end up defeating is yourself."

He started to turn away, but her hands moved to his face, keeping his eyes aligned with hers as she said what he needed most to hear but no one ever told him.

"_You can't protect everyone, Jake. _Before we go any further, I need to know that you can accept that."

Jake drifted away for a moment, his eyes wide and confused, a child lost in some strange place he didn't understand. Seras brought his chin back up to face her, much as she had on their first spar when she reminded him of her promise.

"Can you accept it?" she asked again.

"I don't know." He said, his face beginning to straighten, "but…I'll try."

Seras rose from her seat and guided him to stand with her, and Jake followed, looking at her expectantly like he had when she first walked in.

"Alright," she began, "We're going to have to figure out a way around this. I can teach you to be faster, but that'll only help so…much…"

Seras trailed off when she noticed her fledgling was staring off into space, as though he'd just realized he'd forgotten to turn the oven off on his way to the grocery store.

"Jake, what's wrong?"

At first didn't seem to hear her, but right as she was about to call him again, he spoke, more to himself than to her.

"If I'm no good in a fair fight…" he murmured, "then we need to make sure it never is."

Seras' brows narrowed, puzzled. "Jake, what are you talking about?"

"Is Walter still awake?" he asked suddenly, as anxious as the night of his first mission.

"I'm not sure--" she began, but he was already on his way to the door. "Hold on, where are you going?"

Halfway through the door, he turned back with the first smile she'd seen since their day at the theatre.

"To see what Hellsing's butler knows about fighting dirty."

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A/N: I know I've been holding out on the action for a good while now, but I promise, it's coming. The next update is going to be a fairly big one, but I promise, it'll be worth the wait. You guys know the drill, read, review, flame, and tell your friends, enemies, total strangers, etc. Thanks for reading everyone, and keep those alerts up, because this story's a good ways from finished and I've still got a trick or two up my sleeve. Tune in next time!


	21. The White King's Dream

**Chapter 21:**

The White King's Dream

The London Bridge. A white van, stuffed with nine soldiers and one "inhuman auxiliary," crept slowly along with the thick rush-hour traffic. From the passenger seat, Jake looked out the window at the sky, much like he had when Seras had taken him to the park. The sun was gone, but the light was not. He wasn't sure he liked it; if he didn't know the time, he could have mistaken it for dawn. He stilled his hand for the fourth time in the last hour, while Mick, oblivious, released and pressed the brake in time with the traffic, muttering the words to a song by The Who. Jake wasn't sure when or how this habit had started, but sometimes, when he wasn't paying attention, he found himself scratching at whatever his hand was laid upon. If he hadn't caught himself the first time, the large weapons case on his lap would have had a fist-sized hole in it by now. Luckily, the hum of the engine, the soft static from the radio, and the gentle breeze of the road passing beneath his feet kept any of the other soldiers from hearing it, but Jake's anxiousness wouldn't allow him to keep it up.

He'd noticed it first about a week into his reading. He'd gone through almost half of Hellsing's files, absorbing the text almost word for word--he'd never known his memory to be so powerful—and had just finished his twenty-seventh combat report when his eyes wandered a few inches to the right and saw that his nails were carving grooves in his mahogany desk. At first he was a little embarrassed with himself; all that noise and he had to finish a chapter before he'd even noticed. But later that morning, after he'd finished the book, clipped his nails, talked with Seras, and gone to bed, it had started to bother him.

Months ago, during a spat with Alucard in the library, Jake had forgotten himself and smashed a table to pieces. The outburst was only momentary, but when he'd seen the No Life King's pleased face, the reality of what he'd done instantly twisted his hatred into terror. All his life, he'd never been even remotely strong, and suddenly he was able to lift a man twice his size without so much as a shrug.

Or tear one apart in a fit of rage.

And now his hand was moving without his permission; without his knowing, even. He was just starting to dismiss it as pre-op paranoia when, at the bridge's end, a stern voice crackled over the radio: "This is Red Queen to March Hare, do you copy?"

Mick picked up the receiver and replied, as if it were the best news he'd heard all day: "March Hare here, read you clear as glass, over,"

The guise of a police raid, Integra had explained, was vital to the suppression of the mission's true nature. As such, she'd assigned codenames to the key figures. Jake thought the choice of motif was a bit ridiculous, but that was probably the point.

"Status?"

"A steady five kilometers from the Mad Hatter's tea party," Mick answered, clearly amused by all this Wonderland business. "Shall we commence painting the roses red?"

There was a silence on the other end, followed by a quick, "Repeat that, March Hare?"

Jake leaned over, put his hand over the receiver and whispered tensely, "That was the cartoon, not the book."

Mick looked surprised. "They're not the same?"

Jake only knew because the book was Ceil's favorite. She'd read it to him so many times he could almost recite pages of it from memory alone. She had always looked upon it with a sense of wonder, and so had he, but there was one part he could never understand, that provoked an strange dread in him even as he recalled it:

_"`He's dreaming now,' said Tweedledee: `and what do you think he's dreaming about?'_

_Alice said `Nobody can guess that.'_

_`Why, about YOU!' Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. `And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?'_

_`Where I am now, of course,' said Alice._

_`Not you!' Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. `You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!'_

_`If that there King was to wake,' added Tweedledum, `you'd go out -- bang! -- just like a candle!'"_

_Mick returned to the radio and Jake to his seat: "The card soldiers are suited up and ready, Red Queen."_

"And the White Rabbit?"

Mick flashed Jake a knowing smile. "Ready as they come, Your Majesty."

Seras' voice interjected in a soft whisper, "Alice to Red Queen, Cheshire Cat and I have arrived on site. The tea party is underway. Four limousines, three taxicabs and…one truck, an eighteen-wheeler. Must be how the 'Hatter ships his tea across town."

Visions of a truck loaded with human cattle, bound, drugged, and caged, swam past Jake's eyes. His jaw tightened. Steinman was lucky man. If Integra hadn't spent half the briefing stressing the importance of his "cooperation," death was only the last point of a long list of things he'd like to give the parasitic bastard.

"Hey kid," said Mick, as friendly as ever, "I understand if you got the jitters, but could you cut that out?"

Jake looked down and saw four scratches on his black weapon case. Somehow, the gloves hadn't helped. He cursed inwardly.

"Sorry." He said quickly, replacing his grip on the side handle. He had to clear his head, to stay focused; the last thing he wanted was a rerun of the metro station. _This is it,_ he thought, _if I blow this, there won't be any second chances. Not for me, or the people in that truck._

"…minimum of nine partygoers," continued Seras. "Could be as many twelve."

"Thirteen," corrected Alucard with insufferable smugness, "Don't forget the truck driver, _Alice_."

Jake could almost hear Seras glare over the radio.

"Red Queen to March Hare: _prepare the scones_. Alice and Cheshire, standby."

Mick confirmed the go-to phrase and went off the main roads. The target was the recently-bought sight of the former Langston's Butchershop and Deli. Steinman's idea of a joke, Jake guessed. He found it strange that so soon after a fiasco like the metro station, Integra was able to pull her resources together quickly enough not only to tap Steinman's phone, but to discover him in the first place. He didn't notice it at the briefing, but Integra normally stated the agency that provided the intel for each mission, but this time she never even mentioned it. This mission was of considerable importance, so it made sense if she wasn't showing her cards, but still, Jake felt the twitch in his fingers grow harder to resist the more he thought about it.

After they were two kilometers away, Mick grabbed the radio and said with unmasked satisfaction: "Scones are hot an' ready, Red Queen!"

Jake rolled down the window, and stuck his head out just barely, his eyes focused on the rooftop Seras and Alucard stood on. It was a strange thing, to see through a vampire's eyes; everything looked just as far away as always, but everything is just as clear as though it were up close.

"Alice, confirm." said integra.

Seras smiled from afar, and even from two thousand meters, Jake could see the deep breath she had taken, and the wistful stretch of her lips. When she spoke into the radio, it was as if she were right beside him.

_"This is the stupidest tea party I've ever been to."_

"White Rabbit, Confirm."

Jake felt Mick speed up to catch a yellow light, took the radio and said: "_I'm late…I'm late…I'm—"_

"Shit!" Mick screamed.

Jake didn't turn around, because Seras' eyes had gone wide and her mouth had wrung open into a cry that he couldn't hear over the explosion of tearing metal and shattered glass. The van twisted to the left, and all Jake could see was a pair of headlights growing bigger and bigger until they and all else disappeared. There were car horns and the smell of blood and gasoline, and a voice marred by static, pleading for him to wake up, wake up, wake up…

_A balloon of fabric pushes against him. Airbag. He gasps and frantically beats it with his little fists—both of them?—as if it were trying to chew his face off. It deflates slowly, giving him a view of the smashed windshield and the dashboard he could barely see over. He looks on the driver's side. A girl of seventeen sits hunched over, her nose broken against the steering wheel. Her long black hair is sprinkled with shards of glass. Blood runs from her nose down the center of the wheel where her airbag should have deployed and falls into her lap in steady, careful drips like a broken faucet. "Ceil…?" he utters, as though he's just recognized her. But she does not move. One hand hangs limply at her side and the other loosely grasps the steering wheel, the same hands that had taught him how to speak to everyone without ever saying a word. Jake's small voice calls her name a second time, then another, then another as though it is the only word he knows. The dripping gets louder; he soon has to shout over it to stop himself from counting the seconds between each lazy smack. Her hair covers her eyes and most of her open mouth that had sung a hundred songs and told even more stories. He cannot touch her. He'd kill her if he touched her, he knows this as surely as a mouse knows that if he looks away from the snake's eyes, he'll be eaten. Five minutes pass and now the tears scold his face and his throat feels like it's been scraped with a wire brush. Still, he keeps reciting her name, as though it contained all the words of the Lord's prayer and the Upanishads and every other holy benediction ever written or imagined. The drip stops, and suddenly he realizes it is not enough. She's moved no more than she had five minutes ago, no more than she ever will again. Jake knows this; he has been in this passenger seat a thousand times and it has never changed. But then he says something new, something he never stayed long enough to hear:_

"_Wake up!"_

_Her jaw moves a little._

"_Ceil, please wake up!"_

_Her head shifts, and a few shards fall from her hair. Her breath comes softly from her mouth--or is it only the wind? He quiets himself and listens, harder than he's listened to anything in his life, and he hears it again. Nothing he had heard before or since could ever match the beauty of her pained groan as she peels her forehead from the wheel and turns to him with sleepy blue eyes. She doesn't even check herself for injuries as she puts an arm around him, rests her head on his small shoulder, and cries. They cling to each other, afraid to move or speak, for fear that Death might hear them and correct its mistake. A moment passes, then a minute, then an hour, and two car doors slam shut as a pair of voices, an old man and woman, call to them, and they realize that in spite of everything, they are still alive._

"Ferguson…Ferguson report!"

As if he'd been drowning, Jake sucked in a breath that escaped in a growl of pain. A piece of metal, most likely the frame, had torn out of the dashboard and through his gut, almost pinning him to his seat. Through the window he'd seen Seras out of moments ago, he could see only a close-up of asphalt and glass. The van had been overturned. Oil and blood crept into his nostrils as he looked down and saw Mick's head dangle limply by his side, while everything from the waist down was held in place by the seatbelt. The blood squirting from his nose and mouth was all over Jake's lap and the smell of it was so sweet it sickened him. He heard a heartbeat, but it was fading fast. Déjà vu crept into him and he was just as small and afraid as he had been moments ago, in the dream so vivid and clear he could have mistaken it for memory.

"Jake? Mick? Somebody pick up the bloody radio!" pleaded Seras.

He returned to himself and grabbed the radio receiver swinging idly in his face. The code words had been dropped; not a good sign. He gritted his teeth and spoke into with shallow breaths.

"Mick's alive, but he won't last long. We need a medic onsite now!"

"What about you?"

"Don't worry about me, I just—" he looked down at the frame that impaled him. Somehow, it had bent sideways halfway through him. He knew what had to be done, and there wasn't any time to be gentle about it. He clenched his teeth and grasped the metal spike in his hand.

"I didn't get all that, what did you—"

Without giving himself the chance to hesitate, he ripped the metal hunk at an upward angle, through his kidney and out of his side. A growl seethed through his teeth as cold blood ran down his thigh while the gaping wound slowly began closing itself. Something was missing and he paused for half a second to think of what.

The car horns had stopped.

"How long was I out?" he choked into receiver.

"About…two and half minutes." Said Seras hastily, "Listen to me: one of Steinman's scouts spotted us."

"What?" Jake spat.

"We shot him down before he could blow our cover, but Steinman's been calling each one every ten minutes like clockwork. If he doesn't get a response, we'll be found out!"

"Rivers, report!" commanded Integra, "Is Corporal Braxton combat-capable? How many are wounded?"

Jake turned back, re-opening his wound, toward the heap of groaning soldiers in the back.

"Status!" he shouted, forgetting his rank and that he'd never given an order in his life.

Jackson clambered upright and faced Jake through the grate while Riley, his left arm limp at his side, forced the back doors open.

"Braxton's down!" barked Jackson. "'Can't feel his legs. And Riley's—"

"—still plenty able to shoot a gun," finished the Irishman.

"Any second now, he and the others are going to scatter like roaches in a floodlight," assessed Integra gravely, "We have no choice but to move in now."

"What about our wounded?" Jake demanded as he kicked open the windshield, tossed his weapons case out of the opening, and wormed out of the van.

"Hellsing does not leave its men behind. Medics are already on their way. Prepare Ferguson and Braxton for extraction and head toward the target at once."

Jake quickly opened the case, put in the earpiece, and pulled apart the rest of the windshield so he could get Mick out as quickly and safely as possible. He and Jackson carefully lifted Mick onto the street next to the Braxton. He went to respond, but stopped a moment, unsure that he'd heard his commander right. He spoke a little lower, so that no one would hear him over approaching sirens.

"Ma'am, are you asking me to take command?"

"No Rivers," she said tersely, "I'm ordering. You have at most eight minutes so take the alleyways. Are we clear, soldier?"

Jake's hand was shaking. Mick's heartbeat was fading, and Jackson, who had been watching him as if he'd disappear if he blinked, was now trying to read his orders through Jake's baffled face.

"_Are we clear_?"

His face tightened and his hand stopped shaking. He was being trusted with salvaging the raid, and as afraid as he was of a bad decision, he was much more afraid of not making one at all.

"Yes sir. Will advise once Mad Hatter is secure."

"God and the Queen be with you."

He heard the link close off and turned to Jackson's eager face.

"Well?" he urged, "Are we phoning it in?"

"No," said Jake soberly. The Hellsing's "ambulances" were already preparing stretchers for Mick and Braxton. He turned to the others, some of whom had just walked out of the wrecked van. A crowd of gawking onlookers had been gathered, and the cops still hadn't shown up to bar them off.

Jake could hardly think of a worse time to learn managerial skills.

"Everyone!" he shouted over the sirens, "The operation has commenced. We're moving in!"

"Under whose command!?" said one soldier, Crowley if Jake remembered correctly, "Both our officers are down!"

"Mine." Said Jake, praying that, between the sharpness of his voice and the harshness of his face, he didn't look near as afraid or sound as uncertain as he really was.

A few soldiers looked at him as if he'd just chewed his own fingers off and offered them a handshake. Others just stared dully at him, still not fully recovered from the wreck. What was he to say at their disbelief? How was he supposed to convince them that he was up for the task, when he himself wasn't even sure?

But Riley just smiled nostalgically, as if he'd been in Jake's place before, then shouted like the world's most deep-voiced leprechaun: "You heard the man! _Move the bloody fuck in!_"

At that, with no complacency, they all snapped out of their stupor, readied their weapons, and formed two straight lines right in front of Jake, Riley leading one of them.

"Orders, sir!" he barked.

As if he'd practiced it a thousand times, Jake kicked open his black case and kneeled down to ready the weapon inside: The Whirlwind. It was an idea that no gunsmith but Walter could even take seriously, much less design and build within two weeks. Its appearance was of some bizarre hybrid of a tommy gun and a revolver, only much larger and designed to be held upside-down. Rather than the traditional silver bullet, it launched eight-inch long silver-plated rods at speeds that rivaled most anti-tank rifles. In spite of Walter's generously detailed description, Jake still didn't understand how it fired without any sort of combustion. All he knew was that it could reduce a slab of bricks to pebbles, and vampires…well, he'd find out soon enough. Below the barrel was what looked like a large flashlight, though its function was far more practical for his purposes. He fastened the ammo pack over his should, and lifted the weapon out of the case. He brought the metal bar jutting out the left side to his teeth, cocked it, and addressed his men.

"We're taking the alleys," he said, with a confidence he didn't expect, "Go full tilt the whole way and stop for nothing; if you can't keep up, stay behind with Mick and Braxton."

The soldiers followed him into the closest back alley, and before Jake could even ask the crowd that had been staring at him like a freak show's main attraction parted like the Red Sea. It just occurred to him that his contact lens was missing, and his make-up was smeared. The wound he'd conceived, while almost healed, had been a tremendous, bleeding gouge just moments before. That couldn't have escaped their notice. Integra wasn't going to be happy about that.

_Don't worry about it,_ soothed Seras in his mind, _Do what you have to do. We're all counting on you._

_I won't fail, Seras, _he said,_ I can't. Not this time._

Jake and his men bounded off. The twilight had ended; it was getting dark and he was thankful for it. The sky was certain of its direction and for once, so was he.

It was his origin that remained to be seen.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

A/N Thanks to all of you who have been ever so patient with me through the bumpy ride this fic has been. I promise, after the next chapter, the pacing is gonna get fierce, so hang on tight!

AND PLEASE REVIEW! I need to know how I'm doing, so that I can keep giving you better material. Thanks again.


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